introduction
“How can I use unconventional forms to express myself?”
Throughout the conceptual unit, we have been challenged to stretch the limits of our creativity and relearn what it means to make art. Spanning a variety of mediums- including but not limited to: poetry, art, web production, and music- and all three classes, we have been given the opportunity to explore projects that force us to take risks. Additionally, we have also developed numerous technical communication skills employing several pieces of modern professional equipment (such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrate, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Audition, DSLR Cameras, and more).
This unit has forced me to adapt and to learn, especially in my English and Digital Media classes. In English, I’ve spent the quarter working on my Art Reflection piece, which required me to dig beneath the surface of the art installation I chose, and find my own meaning. Then, in Digital Media, I learned how to adapt my writing into a video with edited audio. Audio editing led directly into the Parody Song project where Chloe and I got to express our creativity through rewritten lyrics, have lots of fun in the recording booth, and learn valuable audio editing techniques.
english + digital media
art reflection
We kicked off our first project at Freestyle with a school trip to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Armed with instructions to locate an art piece that spoke to me, I found myself wandering through museum, taking in the sights (and sounds!) of the various exhibits. Then I saw it. Yayoi Kusama’s “Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart.” Over the subsequent days in English, I put my ideas into words, writing a short piece viewing the art through the lens of awe. Once I had finalized my work and recorded myself reading it, I learned valuable lessons about Adobe Audition, including normalizing audio clips and DeEssing for a better auditory experience. Moving to Adobe Premiere, I learned how to use visual effects such as fade in/out transitions, Ken Burns effects, text editing, and keyframing, ultimately allowing me to produce a video that I felt reflected my experience with the art.
main takeaways: This project taught me valuable skills and Adobe programs that I had zero prior experience using. I really value the opportunity this project gave me to learn how to express my thoughts and feelings in a way that isn’t just words on a paper. I was able to, in addition to my piece for English, create a video that is able to imbue my words with the same passion and emotion that I intended when I wrote them. In other words, this project has opened up a whole new avenue for self-expression that I can’t wait to continue developing!
parody production
▶ fake fall
⏸ fake fall
In the Parody Production, we had to write our own parody lyrics to a song we liked, then go into the recording booths and record ourselves singing to a karaoke track of the original song. One it was recorded (on Adobe Audition), Chloe and I listened through all of the takes and selected the specific takes we wanted for each verse. Then, we applied the skills we learned on Adobe Audition from earlier in the year to make our voices clearer and more level. The final adjustments included reverb and normalization of the audio to make the transition between our voices smoother.
Our parody is about how hot it is in California during the fall. We chose the song “Long Sleeves,” by Gracie Abrams because it had a relatively easy to follow melody and a good syllable structure for us to rewrite our lyrics. Once we drafted our lyrics, which we did by counting the number of syllables in each line and then rewriting the line accordingly, we went into one of the isolation booths and recorded our audio. After picking our favorite takes for the verse, chorus, and outro, we oriented them with the backing track and began to edit. In terms of editing, we mostly used the DeEsser and Reverb to emulate Gracie’s original song. The most interesting thing to us in the process of making this parody was learning all about how to use volume control and other effects to make two voices sound like they belong on the same song. Our lyrics took a lot of inspiration from the fact that it was 93 degrees and October the day we wrote the first draft of the lyrics. We wanted to play off of our frustration about not being able to wear scarves and Uggs during the fall like most people can. Our proudest moment during the Parody Production was when we listened to it after completing all of our desired edits. This was the first time it really sounded like a song (rather than a string of disjointed audio clips), and both of us were really happy with the final product. It was really cool to see how all of the skills we learned culminated into our parody song.
parody lyrics
Lucy:
Pumpkin’s on the shelf
Still I’m in tank tops, help
I don’t know what it is but fall feels fake
But fall feels fake
I wanna stay inside
Hate how I’m slowly fried
It’s 90 in the shade
Send rain, not flames
Send rain, not flames
And if you see me
Melting in a hoodie
Could you just pretend that
Fall exists at all?
Cause I can’t fake it
Even with my Uggs on
This scarf is just for fashion
And I’m sunburnt again
It’s been a long time sweating
It’s been a long time sweating
It’s been a long time sweating
It’s been a long time sweating
Chloe:
Sweatin’ through a wave of heat
Sun’s been a catalyst
It’s like an oven, yes
I don’t know what is but fall feels fake
But fall feels fake
Fought till the heat got me
Trapped in some denim jeans
Hallucinated rain
But it was sprinklers
It was sprinklers
And if you see me
Melting in a hoodie
Could you just pretend that
Fall exists at all?
Cause I can’t fake it
Even with my Uggs on
This scarf is just for fashion
And I’m sunburnt again
It’s been a long time melting
It’s been a long time melting
It’s been a long time melting
It’s been a long time melting
photoshop blend modes
Then, in Digital Media, we moved on to exploring Adobe Photoshop and its editing capabilities. One way we learned to do this was through blending modes, more specifically using blending modes to salvage photos that were too dark or light. After we learned the basics, we moved onto more advanced and creative pathways. This was when we learned how to use blending modes to combine multiple photos.
I valued learning about Photoshop Blend Modes because they allowed me to take phots that I previously thought were unusable and edit them minimally so they are more visually appealing. I especially appreciated learning how to use multiply and screen, because when I was first learning to take photos with the cameras, I was struggling a lot with having photos that were either too bright or too dark. Now, I don’t have to discard photos that I like the composition of just because they are slightly too dark or bright. I see myself using my new Photoshop skills to improve my photography skills. One thing I previously said I wanted to learn was to add emphasis in photos that felt flat. In this lesson, I learned how to do that with a brush and the overlay blend mode. I plan on expanding on my understanding of using brushes and blend modes together to add depth and emphasis to my photos.
dslr practice photos
Backtracking slightly to the beginning of the year, we spent several class periods learning how to professionally and effectively use our DSLR cameras (a skill that I further developed in Design). In Digital Media, however, we covered Tv mode with long exposure night photography (and more applicably through low light, light-wand photos), flash practice with portraits in front of fun and stylized backdrops, P-mode with ISO changes, and altering White Balance manually on the camera.
Learning to use a DSLR camera has been both challenging and rewarding. Working with Av mode to control depth of field was initially difficult to master, but seeing the results made the effort worthwhile: the ability to isolate subjects with shallow depth of field or capture entire scenes in sharp focus with deep depth of field opened up creative possibilities I hadn’t considered before. But for me, the Tv mode low light sessions were highlights of the lessons; using long exposures with light wands allowed us to be creative with the scenes we were capturing. And practicing flash photography for portraits taught me a valuable professional and life skill that I can use beyond this class. Experimenting with P-mode and ISO adjustments helped me understand how to achieve better-lit photos in various lighting conditions, though I quickly learned to be cautious of grain at higher ISO settings. Finally, altering white balance was eye-opening because it demonstrated how we could change the entire mood and atmosphere of our photos in-camera, without needing to rely on post-shoot editing. Overall, this hands-on experience with manual camera controls has given me a deeper appreciation for the artistry and technical skill involved in photography.
design
design introduction
Here at Freestyle, we have the choice of three electives. And I (if you couldn’t already tell) chose Design! During the Conceptual Unit, we focused on learning and building on valuable skills that will aid us for the rest of our time here at Freestyle. The main medium of this first unit was photography, with our skills developing as we learned more about our DSLR cameras in class, which we used as an method to learn valuable principals of art (such as the Principles of Design). I deeply value being a Design student because it has taught me that everything is design. From the websites we visit every day to the layout of posters on a wall, almost everything we interact with carries an aspect of design. In other words, Design has taught me a universal language that operates beyond words, and I am excited to continue learning it.
alpha name Photography
This project was all about the art of noticing. We were instructed to go outdoors, whether it was to our backyards or our community parks, and simply notice the things we typically overlook. Using our macro lenses and knowledge of composition, we took photos of instances where the letters of our name occurred naturally. Then, once we had several iterations for each letter, we workshopped them in class and learned valuable editing skills in Adobe Photoshop such as Curves adjustment layers and vignettes.
conceptual photograph
For the Conceptual Photo project, we were handed an impossible task: photograph an idea. Not an object that represents an idea, but the idea itself. And the way we went about doing this was boiling down our perception of a certain emotion, or experience, to its very core, and then representing it through a symbol. At least for me, this was initially very tricky to wrap my head around. I’m more used to traditional types of art, where symbolism is present, but certainly not to the degree that it was in this project. Eventually, though, I found myself enjoying working on the project and brainstorming unique way to represent my assigned statement.
I am exploring the feeling of dread when receiving a present.
Artist Statement: This photograph is composed of a 15 lb dumbbell, an old padlock, and my house keys– with a pink, marshmallow jellycat attached– against my rug. Dread is a heavy emotion. I decided to very tangible represent that with a physical weight. Attached to it is a padlock. This padlock represents my mind, as it is attached to the dumbbell which represents dread. I decided to use my grandmother’s necklace to connect the padlock because it is representative of my identity: my family history. In order to integrate the feeling of dread as a weight with the padlock that represented my mind, I knew I needed to physically connect the two. By doing it with something I considered representative of my identity, I enforced the conceptual meaning of the padlock, and showed how engrained the emotion of dread can feel in your head– like it is as real as the most fundamental parts of myself. The key exemplifies receiving a present. When keys are put in locks, the locks unlock. This is the same mechanism that is reflected in gift-giving. When someone is given something and it resonates with them, it has the potential to strengthen the relationship or prompt the two people to become more connected (the lock opening). The final piece of the composition was the background: the rug on the floor of my bedroom. The rug is another embodiment of my identity, pushing the boundaries of my representative “mind” to the edges of the composition.
During this project, I learned a lot about external sources of light. In my final photo, I used overhead lighting (located on the other side of the room) so the objects cast faint shadows, creating contrast between the objects and the rug. However, because this was a warm light, I had to use cooling photo filters in Photoshop to compensate for a too-low white balance. In addition, I used a ‘Curves’ adjustment layer to increase contrast and create more visual emphasis. Finally, I used a Camera Raw filter to add a vignette, effectively framing the image and forcing the viewer’s eye to the focal point (my selected objects) of my composition.
