The Purpose of this Conceptual Project is to allow us to explore and develop our abstract thinking and communication skills. This conceptual unit pushes us to creatively take risks to communicate my personal aesthetic along with my social/political opinions. In my English class we were required to write an Expository Essay about one of our passions and create free verse, haiku, ekphrastic, and spoken word poems. In Design we were suppose to take one of our poems that we wrote in english a produce a photo that reflects the poem. We then had to create a concept statement of our photo to show our inspiration behind it. In Digital Media we had to take our Haiku poem and use our knowledge of Pro tools to create music, a recording of me performing my Haiku and making that into a video. We also had to put together our Conceptual website that showcases all of our work. Throughout my website it showcases all of the work I have done in this unit. In my poems section it will show the 3 poems I wrote in english along with a video with music. In my Haiku section there will be another video with music and voice recording for me performing the poem. Which was made with Pro Tools and Animation to create the video. In my art section is shows the photograph I took which is based on my free verse poem. And finally in my music section it will show my experimental music that I produced raw. During this unit I liked the fact that we had freedom to create our own pieces of work based on stuff that’s important to me. My expository essay that I wrote for english was about my passion for the sport of soccer. I explained it in an insightful way giving examples as to why it’s such a passion of mine and why it's important to me. I ultimately said that soccer is more than a passion it's a lifestyle and it has shaped the person I have become today.

 

 

In english we were assigned 4 poems to write, ekphrastic, spoken word, free verse, and haiku. Each of these poems pushed me to dig deeper and connect to a subject to produce a good poem. Especially with the free verse poem we were given a lot of freedom to choose our topic but the only requirements really was to dig deep find connects between words, use sensory detail, etc. One of the poems that we wrote was an Ekphrastic poem which is where you take a piece of artwork and write a poem about it or describes it or make an story from it, basically making it your focal point of inspiration. Through the study of poetry i grew a lot on my creativity and thinking outside of the box. Trying to push myself to dig deeper and come up with poem that meant something to me. What I valued the most was that I could share something personal through a poem and i was able to get guidance to share my poem the way I wanted to.

 

The Haiku poem was based on the concept statement, I am experiencing the feeling of loneliness through the experience of Deja Vu. I was able to produce a piece about a stuffed animal that I got when i was a newborn baby that I still have. But to capture the loneliness part of it I showed how I slowly forgot about the stuffed animal and how much it once met to me. In digital media we took the poem we wrote created an image that we took, them made it into to a video with music and a recording of me performing the poem. What I liked the best form this project was the challenge of creating a poem completely from scratch while still having to connect it back to our concept statement.

I am exploring the feeling of sadness through the experience of the lose of my grandma

 

 

In design we had to pick from the 4 poems that we did in class to create a photograph that reflected/related to the poem. I chose my free verse poem because i instantly got good ideas on what to photograph. I used lines from my poem which inspired me to create a photo with and empty picture frame with a shadow being casted into it. Through the study of photography I was able to learn how to control lighting, soom, iso, etc. which I will not only use in class but also in real life if i want to take photos. I valued the learning experience of how to use a camera the proper way.

My photo was based off of a poem I wrote about the experience of my grandma passing, the line: The memories she left me, will never fade away. This line inspired me to capture and depict my photo in this manner. The phrase fade away that I used in my poem inspired me to use a shadow because in the course of a day shadows slowly begin to fade away and you can’t see them anymore. The line, The moment has come. also had an influence on me while capturing my photo. The word moment relates to the shadow in how in a single moment the shadow slowly disappears by the movement of the sun. Since the sun is always moving the shadow always constantly changes until it disappears. The photo that I captured represents a shadow in a empty picture frame. The shadow represents my grandma that passed and the empty picture frame represents the sense of something missing. Usually a photo should be placed inside of the photo frame but it was missing. Relating to when my grandma was alive, then slowly passed and disappeared from my life which also affected my loved one’s as well. Along with the shadow and photo frame that I used in my image, green leaves also appear in the the silhouette. These leaves represent my grandma’s Irish ethnicity because the color green is very sufficient in this culture. While trying to produce this piece I ran into many difficulties like lighting and the the sun constantly rotating which made it hard to get the perfect shadow into the right place. Also there was a short time period to get this shot taken along with making sure that background didn’t get over exposed because of the sun. So balancing the amount of sun in the photo and getting enough sun to create a shadow was the most challenging.

The experimental music assignment was our first chance at creating something that expresses me through the sound of music. I used Pro Tools (a music editing program) to produce and edit our music to make it mash up properly. I took multiple tracks and edited each clip, changing the volume to give a more dynamic feel to the music. I valued the fact that I was able to create something that expressed who I was and that it could be anything I wanted so i was able to really show what I could do and accomplish. While I was creating this song I was going for a slow tempo and a soft feel to it.