For our first project in Freestyle we focused on one concept statement. Our concept statements were picked by pulling a feeling and an action out of brown paper bags in English class. My concept statement was: exploring the feeling of love through preserving memories. For the rest of the unit we continued to use this statement for each of our projects within this unit. In design we created an image that was based off of our statement. We had to find objects which worked together and conveyed our overall message. In English we wrote poetry. Our photo haiku's were also based on the concept statement and a brief description about the process is posted in that section of my conceptual web page. Only one of our other poems was based on the statement, the ten line poem. The other two poems we wrote were about different subjects. Our ekphrastic poem was based on a painting we found at the De Young Museum and our spoken word was about anything we wanted it to be. In Web Audio we created this website in order to share our creations with everyone. I hope you enjoy looking through the work on my website.

In English class we focused on poetry this unit. We explored different types of poetry and learned more about how to write poetry. My ten line poem is based off of the concept statement we chose. The ekphrastic poem is based after a painting that we had to find in the De Young Museum. The painting I chose was Superman by Mel Ramos. For the spoken word poem we were allowed to write about anything that we wanted to.  After we wrote the poems we edited them through class discussions and peer review. In Web class we then took the poems and created an image to put them infront of which would enhance the meaning. The final product was created in Photoshop. One last detail was added when we recorded our poems in the sound booth using pro tools and matched those with music and sounds to enhance them. Below are my three poems, I hope you enjoy them!

In the beginning of our conceptual unit in English we picked out a feeling and a motion from two different bags. These were to be inserted in a sentence to create a concept statement. My statement was: Exploring the feeling of love through preserving memories. After choosing our concept statements we spent the rest of the unit focused mainly on poetry. The largest portion of this unit was spent on writing haiku's. After writing the haiku's we took photos which expressed the meanings in our haiku's. We also recorded ourselves reciting the poems and put all components together. In the end we created the video below, I hope you enjoy it.

 

Above is a screen-shot depicting the process of making the photo haiku as a whole using Flash. After we presented out photo haiku's in English we took them into web/audio and made them into a short video of sorts. By recording our selves saying the haiku and adding music we created a sort of soundtrack for the piece. We then created an opening slide and a closing slide to add to the middle slide of the actual haiku. All of this was done through using Pro Tools for the audio and Flash for the ending product.

I am exploring the feeling of love through preserving memories.

 

When you think about love, most people automatically think about hearts. They think about generic red hearts, not the hearts which pump blood through our bodies. When I was thinking about love I wanted the object I used to be universally understood but also unique and challenge the viewer to look deeper. I decided to use the pork heart because I felt that it caused the same emotional reaction that a valentine heart would, but with an added uniqueness. I shot the heart from many different angles, but I felt that at this particular angle the heart created the most raw emotion and universal recognition. It looks like a heart and it wouldn’t be mistaken for anything else. I decided to rest the heart on newspaper because to me a newspaper is one of the best forms of preserving memories. Everyday people’s memories are written and cataloged in newspapers, preserving them in time. If you look closely you can see that the specific section of the newspaper which I chose was the obituary pages. To some this might seem sad or depressing, but I think of it as another preservation of memory. People wish to uphold the legacy that their loved one created and so they write about them in the obituaries, to keep the memory alive and safe. Between the newspaper and the heart I placed a layer of plastic wrap. I felt that this was need to add extra emphasis on the idea of love literally being preserved. Plastic wrap is used to keep stuff better for longer periods of time, for preserving foods or meats. The three objects really work well together in bringing the concept of love through the preservation of memories into a visual aspect. The thing I liked about the positioning of the newspapers was that there is a photo in the foreground of an old woman. This is the object I chose to filter because I felt that this memory needed some extra preserving. By adding the plastic wrap filter to it I enhanced the idea of memories being preserved and also the love of family members for each other. As far as lighting and positioning go I tried to figure out the best angle and light which showed the rawness of the heart but also the gleam of the plastic wrap. The balance was tough to get because you had to get enough light for the color but not so much that a gleam covered up too much of the newspaper. In the end I am pleased with the final product.

This photo would not have been possible without the enhancements of Photoshop. I learned so much about how something as simple as cropping can affect an entire image. Certain tools such as vignetting, filtering, boosting color, fixing contrast, and changing exposure really affected my image for the better. By vignetting the corners I was able push the viewer's focus to the center, to the heart. I also boosted the color of the heart to make it more red, adding an extra sense of love to the photo. Changing the exposure and the contrast allowed me to figure out the best setting for my heart and the best lighting for seeing all three objects working together. Most important was probably the pen tool which allowed me to select different objects when I was trying to decide which would look best when filtered. All of these special tools led to the creation of my final product which looks better than if they hadn’t been used at all.

The image I created enhances the ideas first portrayed in my concept statement. It takes the simple and universally cliche ideas of love and preserving memories and adds a unique and unexpected twist to them. The idea of showing love through an actual animal heart is in many ways unthought of, but I see it as a rawer version of love. While newspapers are very often seen as preserving history or events, many people might not regard it as something that preserves memories. I believe that memories are not just of one person, but the memories of an entire nation or people. Newspapers keep the memories of entire populations preserved in time. The added layer of plastic wrap enforces the idea of protection and preservation. While we normally use it for preserving foods, in this case it has two uses. It preserves the love being the heart and the memories being the newspaper. Together the three completely different objects create an image which visualizes the concept statement of love and preserving memories.

The above image is a snapshot taken from Photoshop depicting the process which I used for editing my conceptual image. After taking the original RAW image we imported it into Photoshop where we cropped and edited the image until I got the final image.

 

This piece of music is based on my perception of how being exposed to new media around the world can create an inviting and exciting atmosphere. This piece is a compilation of trumpets, drums, and computer based beats is inviting and I feel it creates a happy tone/mood. I created it with the help of the Pro Tools application and also some pre recorded trumpets and drums. Hopefully you all get the same happy feelings listening to it as I had making it.