Introduction
Conceptual projects emphasizes on the creative process and the interpretation of something in order to create a final product. From creating pieces of artwork to photographs or even putting everything together into a video. By using a wide selection of different media and programs such as DSLR Cameras to take photographs and Adobe programs, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Audition, are all used in order to create something out of nothing.
In the first quarter of the year at Freestyle, we learnt how to create different types of media from different programs and ideas. Overall, I really liked the Conceptual unit not only in digital media but also in english. Both classes has allowed me to think creatively and just to focus on that creative process to create anything even if the final product isn’t well. Digital media has allowed me to learn these new project that I can use in order to create videos, songs and photography while english has allowed me to think creatively and to share those ideas.
Art Reflection
At the start of the first quarter, we travel to SF MOMA, to see different types of artworks and different styles. During this field trip, we were tasked in finding a piece art that we either found interested or something that connected to us. The end result of this field trip, was a video art reflection about the painting that I had found interesting. In the painting, I noticed the different roads that branched out into different directions and split off from each other. Conceptually, I believe that these roads could represent the different paths taken as like roads, there are many different ways you can move throughout to get to your end point. This project also help me grow technical as it taught me how to use Premiere Pro that will be useful in the future to create even more video projects.
Overall:
Overall, this project help me grow both in english and digital media where in the english aspect, I was able to think creatively and interpret the piece into something that I understand. This greatly helps because being able to understand how to interpret a piece of art can be also used in interpret a pieces of literature and that skill that was learnt in this SF MOMA project benefited my skills in english. Alongside the growth of interpretation skills, this project also helped me grow in digital media because from this project, I was able to learn how to use Premiere Pro which is a very use program in order to create videos and being able to know the basic of how to use it will greatly make any other video projects easier.
Music Parody Introduction
After finishing the SF MOMA project, we headed off to using Adobe Audition to edit audio and music. At the end of learning how to use Adobe Audition, we were given the task to make a parody off a song of our choice. The worse the parody was, the better because it would be more funny. This project was really fun because I love to make stupid parodies of music because it so fun to make a normal song sound really weird and random. Writing lyrics wouldn’t be too hard to write but singing… singing was a different story. My singing voice has been described as a dying new born. Which doesn’t paint a good image of my singing voice, so going into this project, the main thing that feared was the singing. But after going through editing lyrics and singing, the end product wasn’t that bad, it sounded pretty decent and for once, my singing voice didn’t sound that bad.
The process for this project was firstly finding a song to make a parody of because that was pretty much the entire premise of the project. Since I was listening to a bunch of “Queen” music during the time of the project, I had decided to pick a song from them. In this case, I pick “Don’t Stop me Now” as it was one of my favorite songs from the band. Now was the topic, I went through different topics but none really stuck to me. Until… out of nowhere, I came up with the idea of singing it about communism. Why communism? Honestly, I have no idea, it sounded funny so I went from there. Once picking the topic, I wrote the lyrics trying to keep it on the same beat as the original but also keeping it somewhat historical. Throughout the song, it kept repeating “Don’t stop me now” but in the context of communism, it was supposed to be the collectively. So I change the “Me” to “us” so it would be the collectively of don’t stop the collectively. I found this line really funny and it just evolved from there. Overall, the lyrics is a mess of me messing around with historical references and promoting communism. (BTW, I’m not really promoting communism… it just sounds like I did). After creating the lyrics, the rest of the project was just doing the singing and editing it together in Adobe Audition. The singing did take good amount of tries, evident from my editing having three different version of my singing and me taking the best part of each of it and sticking it together. I used reverb and also changing the audio levels of my music in order to make it sound a bit more decent.
Tonight, we’re gonna overthrow the Russian Government, And replace it with a socialist society
Because why not, the tsar kinda sucks, and communism is better
So don’t stop us now
don’t stop us
Cause we’re overthrowing, overthrowing them
I’m a Communist, Running throughout the city
Like Lenin defying the laws of society
I’m a Socialist, passing by the likes of Tsar
We’re gonna go, go, go
There’s no stopping us
We’re Burning the palace (yeah)
June 1923, That’s why they call me Bolsheviks
I’m Converting them at the speed of light
I wanna make a communist out of you
Don’t stop us now,
I’m having such a good time I’m having a ball
Don’t stop us now
If you wanna be a Communist , just give us a call
Don’t stop us now (’cause we’re overthrowing the government )
Don’t stop us now (yes, we’re overthrowing them )
we don’t want to stop at all Yeah
I’m a marxist going to the winter Palace
On a collision course I am a soviet ,
I’m out of control I am a Leninist ,
ready to revolt
Like an anti capitalist about to Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh explode
I’m burnin’ The winter palace , yeah
June 1923, That’s why they call me Bolsheviks
I’m Converting them at the speed of light
I wanna make a communist out of you
Don’t stop us , don’t stop us
Don’t stop us , hey, hey, hey
Don’t stop us , don’t stop us Ooh ooh ooh,
I like it Don’t stop us , don’t stop us
Have a good time, good time
Don’t stop us , don’t stop us , ah
Oh yeah Alright Oh,
we’re hunting down the Tsar
June, 1923, That’s why they call me Bolsheviks
I’m Converting them at the speed of light
I wanna make a communist out of you
Don’t stop us now,
We’re starting the revolution
we’re tearing it down
Don’t stop us now If you wanna be a Communist , just give us a call
Just give us a call (alright) Don’t stop us now (’cause we’re having a good time, yeah yeah)
Don’t stop us now (yes, I’m havin’ a good time)
I don’t want to stop at all La da da da daah Da da da haa Ha da da ha ha haaa Ha da daa ha da da aaa Ooh ooh ooh
Overall:
This project was a lot of fun where I could sing to whatever I wrote and tried to make it as funny as possible. Was it hard? A little bit, I had to record a couple of time and cut some parts and replace it with other audio clips. Was it fun? A whole bunch of fun. Not only did I had a good time, but I also learnt how to use Adobe Audition and in the future I can use Adobe Audition for more audio editing.
Design Introduction
What is design? Design is everything and anything because it can be from looking at chair, someone designed that or looking at a webpage, someone also design that. In design, we mainly work on learning how to use Adobe program such as Photoshop and Illustrator. We also learnt the different elements of design such as the colour wheel, hue and saturation. Along with basic elements of design, we also learn how to use a camera and the different elements of photography, such as rule of thirds and leading lines. The goal of design is to make something out of nothing and create something that is appealing to the eye
For the Conceptual unit for design, we worked on some basics of design, such as the elements of design and element of photography. In addition, we also did experimental and abstract photography such as, the black and white names and our conceptual self portrait. These project both taught us how to use the elements of design and the elements of photography to create emotion in a metaphorical way.
Something that I enjoy as a design student is that design is such a large umbrella where anything can be defined as design and it gives so much freedom in what I want to do. In the real world, when working, anything you do can be define design something, from designing a logo for a company or even designing a new coffee drink. With the emergent of AI, there is some worry about AI taking over design jobs but when you think about it, everything is design and design of humans are so much more creatively because there is emotion put into these designs.
Alpha Name Photography
For one of the first project in design, we were tasked in finding different objects outside that looked like letter and to take different photos of “letter” to create our name. After taking these photos, we then looked through all of the photos to find the best one of them all and edited them using cropping or changing the hue and saturation. After all of the editing was done, the end product was our names using letters from objects in a line.
Conceptual Self Portrait
The second project in Design was the conceptual self portrait where we were given a prompt, my prompt was “I’m experiencing hatred from changing my mine”, After given the prompt, the next step was for us to find different objects that would fit the prompt, however it couldn’t be anything obvious or cliche. So this part of the project was one of the hardest part because this took the most time thinking and figuring out how to put it together. Once we had the objects, in this case, I had styrofoam and clothes, we went ahead and started taking photos where we put the different objects into different positions and took photos. At the end, I had around 100ish photos of just styrofoam and clothes, and then I went ahead and picked out the best photo to use.
Artist Statement
In my photograph, the two items present are pieces of styrofoam and different kinds of clothes. The styrofoam represents the hatred that I have from the sound of styrofoam rubbing against each other and how I just innately have a hatred towards it because it annoys me and makes my ears hurt. The clothes are representing me changing my mind because like changing ideas, I will usually change what kinds of clothes I would wear for today depending on what I’m going to do and where I’m going. Such as how changing your clothes are messy, changing your mind can be messy at times. The placement of the items represent the messiness that comes from changing clothes and picking and choosing with the styrofoam being on top because when you have to move styrofoam, it makes a sound as it rubs against each other. I wanted the angle of the photo to be centered towards the styrofoam because I wanted the main focus being the hatred emotion and how the styrofoam is the center of attention when it makes the sound. The reasoning behind the background was that most clothes are usually found in one’s room or closet and how closets are usually messy which help drive the narrative of changing clothes is messy like how changing your mind can be messy at times.
I used Adobe Photoshop in order to edit this photograph where I cropped the image in order to have the styrofoam in the center and got rid of the extra parts of the clothes that were not impactful on the image. I learned how to add and use a hue and saturation layer to highlight and change colors of objects that I had selected. So I added a hue and saturation layer in order to highlight the styrofoam and make it brighter so it would contrast more with the clothes and background.
