INTRODUCTION:

“How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”

The end of year explorations project for Freestyle juniors provides an opportunity to pursue our own learning in an area of our choice and create a final product from what we have learned.

For my project, I knew that I really wanted to introduce myself to the world of 3d modeling, which wasn’t a medium I had ever truly explored before the beginning of this project. I did some research in order to find a free, powerful, yet approachable software to learn on as a beginner. This led me to Womp which is a browser-based 3d modeling design platform. I was drawn to it because of its liquid modeling style, where you can flexibly ‘goop’ primary shapes together to create more complex forms. The goal of this project overall was to improve my technological literacy in the world of 3d modeling.

INSPIRATION: the inspiration for this project first came to me while working on the lighting design for MVHS’ spring musical, Six. During the programming process of this show, we used DMX wireless transmitter/receivers to communicate with the lights (mainly moving beam lights) from our computer. During the rehearsal process, these two things (the transmitters and the lights), in combination, caused a ton of issues. The lights were difficult to program and would sometimes malfunction or disconnect due to a weak connection through the wireless transmitters. I was very tired of these two things throughout tech week. That was around when I realized that I didn’t have tons of problems, I just had innocent little people trying to do their job and keep it together under all the extremely stressful circumstances. I then decided that I wanted to make these theater technologies look like harmless, well-meaning little characters.

PROCESS:

PRACTICE + LEARNING WOMP:

BEAM MOVER:

DMX WIRELESS TRANSMITTER/RECEIVER:

REFLECTION:

I had a TON of fun using Womp. The learning curve was fairly smooth despite the challenges and it was always exciting when I discovered more and more features within the program (especially the lighting). I think the final projects are very nice looking given the amount of time I was able to allocate to the project outside of school. If I were to continue experimenting, I would practice creating more complex and unique forms using the program. I found that it was very easy to use when creating something very simple, but once I moved to something with more complicated shapes (aka the C-clamp design or the wires on both designs), it got really tricky really quickly. I ended up not loving the C-clamp design not only because it was tricky to make into an appealing character, but there were also some parts of it that felt lumpy and unpolished that I was having many difficulties smoothing out. Overall Womp is a very appealing software, however I can tell that it does not focus on precision, so when trying to create very symmetrical and even designs, it was a lot of very careful eye-balling which I did not love.

I’m really excited for senior year where we will be learning how to create 3d models using more powerful and complex programs, and I feel like this was a good introduction into that.

POETRY EXPLORATION:

For our poetry exploration unit we were lucky to be joined by poet Christine Moore for a 3 day workshop period as an introduction to poetry. She invited us to discuss numerous different poems as inspiration and showed us many interesting poetry techniques and styles. Each workshop day, we would be introduced to a type or style of poem to exercise the techniques we learned and inspire us to write. There were 3 main types of poetry she invited us to write.

NEWSPAPER POEM: On our first day of workshopping, Ms. Moore brought in clippings of modern day newspapers to inspire us to write poetry about. I chose an article titled ‘ Nation’s budget still topic focus, just not Trump’s’ . I had a lot of trouble actually formulating a poem about the article, however I really enjoyed the brainstorming process.

ARS POETICA POEM: We learned about Ars Poetica poetry, which is essentially poetry with the subject of poetry itself. I started to write a poem about poetry, but I think it mostly drifted away from that by the end. It wasn’t a formed draft by the end whatsoever, but I feel like I was trying to explore how poetry and other non-physical things in our lives take up space. To me a major defining feature of poetry is the way that it creatively plays with words, so  I tried experimenting with homophones like to, too, two, aloud, allowed, which, witch etc. I wasn’t thinking much about my text arrangement choices when I wrote it as it’s tricky on paper to experiment with, but I did sort of want to play with the idea of having the homophones line up with one another so that it really does feel like the same phrase over and over again with different meanings.

CENTO POEM: For our last day of workshops with Ms. Moore, we practiced creating cento poems, which are poems composed solely of words written by other people/poets. I really enjoyed this process of configuring the snippets of the given poems to create a new meaning. Similar to the newspaper poem, I again realized how slow I am at arranging words, so I also didn’t get much of a draft done, but I would really like to try this style again as it was very intriguing.

FINAL POEM

For our final draft of our poem we were invited to revise one of our previous poetry styles from the workshops with Ms. Moore, but I decided to create a separate poem using the techniques we learned about instead of the poetry styles. I was inspired by the poem Toad Dreams by Marge Piercy.

THE STRONG PEOPLE

Maya Lacy

I wish I could be like the strong people at the bottom of the stack.

The ones who are capable
of harnessing the forces of the feeble
worlds.

The ones whose symbiosis of calculated shifting
balances our drifting
chords.

The brute strength of these minyanim
quake the cement between
herds.

They hold a fierce power that the pre-existant
guilds could never solely muster.

I respect the strong people at the bottom of the stack.

This poem is about the people who hold society together as a whole. The people who have the power to reconcile with others, make compromises, all the while treating everyone with respect and kindness. The parents who can gently resolve conflicts between siblings, the leaders who can make calculated, whole, decisions, as well as simply the people we are surrounded by day to day who have the strength to remain empathetic no matter the situation.

This poem was additionally inspired by toes. Toes are undeniably crucial to the balance and composure of our bodies to be able to carry out our day to day endeavors. Yet, they are very rarely acknowledged due to their always being surrounded by sweaty socks and shoes. It’s a very odd analogy, but I thought it was interesting how the strength of our toes at the bottom of the tall stacking of our bodies relate to the strong people who hold up the delicate balance of society.