In the conceptual unit, I was able to freely express myself through different platforms: poetry, photography, music, and web production. I developed and improved many different skills for these different projects in the conceptual unit. I improved my technical communication skills through learning to use a Tascam Audio Recorders, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premier, Avid Pro Tools, and WordPress.

In my Design class, I improved upon my photography skills and gained a new perspective on conceptual photography. I value getting the experience to learn more about Adobe Photoshop and getting more comfortable with using this application to edit my photos with more ease. In English class, I got to explore different emotions through writing poetry and building my own thoughts into different poems that represent different conceptual statements. In Digital Media, I brought my poems to life through visual cover art for my poems, as well as creating a recording of the actual poems. All the three classes combined taught me valuable lessons that were all intertwined together in a sense.

Ekphrastic Poem

Using the poems we crafted in our English classes, we were able to create the poems into a photo with a recording in Digital Media. I used my ekphrastic poem to create the Poem Photo and Recording using Adobe Photoshop and Pro Tools, and used my conceptual poem to create a Photo Haiku Photo and Video using Adobe Premier. The ekphrastic poem is based off a work of art that I found at the MOMA, which I took my own interpretation on and wrote a poem about what I thought the work of art was trying to communicate. With this project, I really enjoyed learning how to combine the audio I created with the image that I edited on photoshop. I was able to express my poem through these different mediums (audio, video, and images), which is gives me an artistic platform and a good learning experience.

This is a screen shot of my workspace on ProTools, which is where I edited the audio recording of my poem. You can see the different audios (the voice recording, the music, and the sound effects) on different layers. You can also tell how I had to change the speed, length, and volume of specific sounds to make the overall audio of the poem sound good.

This is a screen shot of my Photoshop workspace, where I edited and created the cover photo for my ekphrastic poem audio recording. I used different tools and layers to create the photo, which can be seen in my Photoshop interface.

Haiku Poem

For our haikus, we were given concept statement in English class which we used to write our haiku poems. My concept statement allowed me to explore the feeling of disgust through the experience of religion. From this, I decided I wanted to write about how religions can pull people apart when people become too focused on religion, and disregard human value. After writing the haiku in English, we created videos to resemble these haikus in Digital Media. Using Adobe Premier, I created a haiku video using an image I shot with text and a voice recording in the background.

From creating the Haiku Video, I learned a lot about editing with Premier Pro and how to use the basic tools to create a visually appealing video. I learned how to animate text, which gives the video a sense of liveliness. For example, I was able to make the text flow naturally in and out of the photo, as well as change in size.

Elements & Principles of Art

In both Design and Digital Media, I learned about the elements and principles of art. In order to apply these to my own artwork, we were assigned to research them and become more comfortable with these elements & principles. Below I have attached the slideshow where I researched photography, modern art, and contemporary art for each element and principle of art. To look through the different slides, click on the title page below and click the arrow keys!

Design

During the Conceptual Unit in Design, we completed several different assignments relating to conceptual ideas and what we had done in English class. The main project of this unit was the Conceptual Photo, but we also had other assignments such as the Alphabet Name Photo and the Elements of Art photo collage.

Conceptual Photo

The objective of this project was to use our Haikus from English class and to display the emotion from our poems into a conceptual photograph. A conceptual photograph is meant to have a deeper metaphorical meaning, and can often be interpreted in different ways by the viewer. Here is my artist statement for this project:

I am exploring the feeling of being trapped through the experience of doing something uncomfortable. 

In my photograph, the main object is a dreamcatcher. The dreamcatcher is meant to represent discomfort through dreams and aspirations. Dreams, whether they are goals for life or simply dreams that we have when we sleep, can be very uncomfortable. People usually don’t see a dreamcatcher as something that would bring discomfort, so I wanted to paint it in a different light—how our dreams can make us feel trapped due to discomfort. The dreamcatcher is hanging from a fish hook, and hovering over a chalk circle, as if it is trapped inside of the circle and stuck to the hook. I chose to shoot the photo in my garage, because it’s a messy and uneasy place to be in, which is what I was going for with this photo. I also shot the photo with artificial lighting to give it an eerie and an uncomfortable light, rather than using warm sunlight that could make it seem more pleasing. 

The dreamcatcher hanging on the fish hook and over the chalk circle represents the feeling of being trapped in a comfort zone and the difficulty in trying to escape from a comfortable mindset. When we do things, or have ideas, that are uncomfortable, we often feel trapped in those ideas and find it hard to be able to overcome these ideas. 

In Adobe Photoshop, I learned how to play around with contrast and lighting to give the image the feeling that I was going for. I wanted to add more contrast and make the photo more dramatic—I changed the tone by adding a slight green tint to make the photo seem even more uncomfortable and to make the lighting cold rather than warm. 

Alphabet Name Photo

For the Alphabet Name photo, we were assigned to walk around campus and take photos of anything in nature or objects that resemble the letters in our names. The goal was to learn to look at things close-up and in detail. Once I took the photos for each letter in my name, I used photoshop to put all the photos together to actually spell out my name.

Elements of Art (photo collage)

The goal of this project was to practice using the elements of art in photography and to learn to put them together into a collage in a pleasing format. I took photos using different lenses (macro lens and 50mm lens) to capture the different elements the best I could. After taking the photos, I edited the photos on Adobe Photoshop and put them all together into one collage photo.

Reflection: