Welcome to my conceptual website! Here you can see all the work that I did at Freestyle in the first quarter. Below you'll find my poems, original art and music, and my first project- the photo haiku. I used many applications to create the various aspects of this website. Some named are Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Pro Tools. I hope you enjoy!

Here is my 10 line peom, Ekphrastic poem, and Spoken word poem. All of these were written in English and then the final products were made using Photoshop.

In English we were asked to write a haiku based off of a concept statement we were given. My statement was "I am exploring the feeling of sympathy through the action of playing games". My haiku was about how I was giving my brother a really hard time after he was trying to weigh in on all my decisions. The picture I used in my project was one that I had taken on the same trip where we had said argument. After creating the photo haiku we recorded our voices saying the poem in WebAudio on Pro Tools. We then used Flash to add music to the beginning and end and also pull all the images together.

 

To give you an idea of how I created my haiku I included this image of my project in Flash. By layering image and audio on top of one another, I was able to come out with my finished product.

I am exploring the feeling of sympathy through the action of playing games

In my photo there is a tree that is split in the middle. On one of the trunks there is a bright yellow bow and on the other is an American flag. The photo has two borders- on the top, the trees branches create a border that leads the eyes to the bow and flag and on the bottom there are rocks that do the same thing. The lighting of the photo is darker because it’s supposed to make the bright bow really pop and also because that is one of the things I like to control as the artist. The reason I had the bow and the flag in separate areas is because I wanted to use rule of thirds to the best of my ability and also because I didn’t want a lot of empty space. By using the two elements plus the borders, I was able to fill the picture and make the audience’s eyes go exactly where I wanted them to.

The first thing I did to my photo was crop the sides, so that the rule of thirds would work better. I then added vignettes so to make the audience’s eyes would move to the subject of the photo. Once in photoshop, I needed to bump up the exposure on the photo. Using some artistic license, I still kept the photo on the darker side because I think it supported my concept statement better and my personal style. After that, I made some selections. This was easily the hardest thing I had to do using photoshop, but I’m glad that I did it because I feel so much more comfortable with selection work. I selected both the bow and the flag, my two subjects of the photo. With the bow, I really wanted it to pop. I increased the exposure and brought out the yellows. Regarding the flag, I wanted an almost opposite result. I deepened the colors in saturation, so they were less vibrant, but still bold. Overall I think I made them both more intense, which wasn’t as well achieved in the photo before. The final thing that I did to edit my photo was add a crosshatching filter to the flag. I didn’t want to touch the bow because it seemed right the way it was- bright, with clean lines, and simple. The flag had a bit more complex meaning behind it, so I thought it needed some more depth there. By adding the crosshatching, it added more texture making it seem more rugged and gritty.

When coming up for an idea for my concept statement, I really struggled with finding two different elements that conveyed what I wanted them to without seeming too cliche. In our brainstorming circle, we came to the conclusion that the best way to go about the playing games aspect was war games. I then thought about the yellow ribbon around a tree to signify someone missing. That, combined with an American flag, representing someone who participated in said war games would compose my photo. Doing further research, I came across this article of a family who had a child missing and their entire neighborhood had ribbons around their trees in support. I made the bow in my photo especially bright and eye catching, not only to signify that someone was gone, but that it’s something we need to feel sympathy for and would also stand for hope that people haven’t given up searching. I had a different approach for the flag. My initial reaction with the flag was that it could have a lot of meanings. I didn’t want there to be the mistake that this was a 4th of July kind of flag. That’s why the flag isn’t as bright or cheery as the bow is. It’s darker, the colors are deeper, and there is more texture because it has a different tone of seriousness to it. It’s supposed to represent the war games and how difficult they really are and how there’s an element of mystery there, that you can’t really know all that happened. Obviously, I couldn’t convey all of this with just one flag, but by having it deeply contrast the bow, I think I was pretty close.

Above is my conceptual photo in progress.

 

This is the place in my website where I can showcase the original music I created using Pro Tools. This was probably the most difficult thing I had to do this quarter. I'm a huge music appreciator, but I realized a long time ago that creating music is not my forte. Throughout the time were we given to create this music, I went a ton of different reactions. I tried jazz, I tried R&B. Nothing was working for me or the message I was trying to send with my website. I finally found some music loops that spoke to me that were under the World catagory. I chose instruments like the sitar, the mrindangam, and the ghatam, all instruments native to India. I then had to include an instrument performed on my own. Using Xpand2 I was able to play some music of my own. This project, although extremely difficult for me, gave me some confidence that I don't always have to be the music appreciator!