Lyrical Essay
The English section of the Narrative Unit consisted of the Lyrical Essay. For this assignment I was given a lot of free reign on what I could choose to write about. The purpose of this was to investigate a topic of my choice through research and lyrical essay writing.
“The lyric essay partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language. It partakes of the essay in its weight, in its overt desire to engage with facts, melding its allegiance to the actual with its passion for imaginative form.”
~ Deborah Tall and John D’Agata
This essay with very few restrictions allowed me to explore my creativity in writing I have never experienced before. Below the essay is an annotated bibliography of the research I used in this assignment as well as an intention statement as to why I chose the subject I did.
In English class I was given several different examples of lyrical writing for various authors, however most of this work was inspired by writing down the thoughts that go through my head on a regular basis. This definitely was an essay I didn’t find frustrating to sit down and write in one sitting.
Lyrical Essay Production
To compliment my Lyrical Essay I was tasked with creating a visual or auditory representation of my essay. I chose to create a 360 degree panoramic drawing of the garden mentioned in my writing. A 360 panoramic drawing uses the 360 view effect in Adobe Photoshop to create a virtual stationary setting where the viewer can turn the camera to see what’s around them.
^ Click and drag around to view the whole image ^
In order to complete this piece I switched back and forth between a panoramic flattened view of my painting to a 360º view. It was necessary for me to use both views because it was difficult for me to picture a 360º environment in only the panoramic view, but far too overwhelming to virtually paint as if an object was in front of me. To help me with this process and understand my dimensions in this virtual 3D space I used the help of a a panoramic grid.
This specific piece was very overwhelming coming from a background of only dealing with 2D drawings. My experience with animation and working with 3D models helped me in this assignment immensely, however drawing something in a three dimensional space versus sculpting something are two very different concepts to visualize. Overall I learned a lot of skills to help me in the future when visualizing digital three dimensional spaces.