The purpose of this Conceptual project is to explore the different mediums in which we can express ourselves in Digital media. Some of the mediums which can be seen within this website are poetry, photography, and music. This page exhibits the finished products within our Conceptual unit. These finished products include a photo haiku, an expository essay, a free verse and spoken word poem, an experimental music composition, and a conceptual photo with an artist statement. These projects were assigned so as to give us means to convey our ideas and express ourselves anyway we like within that art form. For example, the experimental music composition could be any genre of music using any sort of instrument or program we would like. This sort of freedom allowed us to be extremely creative and resourceful with the technology and supplies given to us in freestyle.

Each class played its part in this project. Design gave us tools to such as photoshop in order to express any sort of visual ideas we may have and portray meaning through extensive use of physical metaphors. On the other hand we have Digital media which not only gave us means to showcase our ideas but a way to present them all in one place. For example, Digital Media gave us Adobe Animate to make our photo haiku video. Digital media also showed us the rungs of Pro Tools in order to create and record any musical ideas we might have. Lastly we have English where most of our projects start. Here we explored the medium of literature and the various forms of poetry we could use to express ourselves such as Haiku, Free Verse, and Spoken Word. Each class played a part in every project and final piece of art we created.

Above you will see six buttons. These six buttons include Projects, Music, Art, Haiku, Poems, and Home. Each button will take you to a different part of my website. The Projects button will take you back to the info page you got here from. The art button will take you to see my conceptual photograph and my artist statement. My music section will take you to see the experimental music I recorded. The name of the song is called Stuffed Shirts. The next button over is the Haiku button. This will take you to my Photo Haiku and, when played, will read you my photo haiku with music in the background. The Poem section of my website will give you a selection of the three poems I have written in the poetry unit this year. These poems are my Ekphrastic, Free Verse, and Spoken word poems. The Home button will bring you back to this section of my website.

Throughout this unit I learned how to use many valuable tools. One of these tools is photoshop, where I learned to crop, distort, select, and edit photos to my liking. I also became aware of the many methods of photography, such as the rule of thirds and how to actually use a camera and manipulate how the picture may come out. Another tool I became familiar with was pro tools where I recorded my music composition, edited it, and exported it as an mp3 file. Here I learned all about the forms of sound such as mono or stereo and how they affect the outcome of a piece of music. I also learned much about the multiple layers a song may have and the amount of editing it takes to make a rough recording sound professional. Lastly I became especially experienced in the use of DreamWeaver. In this application I was able to create my Conceptual and Projects website. In DreamWeaver I learned how to link websites together, import sound, videos, and images, and make eye catching designs. Artistically I learned what makes a good website design vs. a bad one by following the acronym, CRAP. This stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.

From the beginning to the end of this project I have had nothing but an engaging experience. At first things were very complicating as I’m not exactly the most tech savvy, but they became much more entertaining as things went and we had more freedom to use the applications we learned. For example, it was frustrating learning how to export my Photo Haiku from Photoshop onto a google doc, but after receiving some help from a former Freestyle student, I was not only able to export the photo I was able to further edit it. From here, I brought this same knowledge into the classroom later that month and showed my acquired knowledge on my Conceptual Photo. I did this by boosting or dimming certain tones of color in specific areas of the photo much like I did in my Photo Haiku Project. It is this sort of application of knowledge and freedom that I truly have enjoyed throughout the Conceptual Project.

Below you will see three poems.

The first is the free verse poem, its title is an Apple A Day. This poem explores the feeling of Joy through Pain. It describes the painful aftermath of biting into an apple. The apple in this poem is a symbol for temptation or for sin. This symbolism is supposed to parallel much of the same meaning behind the apple in the story of adam and eve. The joy that is felt from this apple is sweet and fruitful much like it would be to actually bite into an apple but the outcome or aftermath is quite harmful. This sort of symbolism can be seen as a metaphor for any sort of addiction, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional. The similarity in each scenario comes in the split second sense of joy that is felt in a relapse of any sort. The goal I had for this poem was to simply challenge the reader's perception of sense and see if I could portray meaning through those senses.

The second poem you will find is the Spoken Word Poem, The title for this poem is Studying Under the Influence. This poem describes a character who struggles with alcoholism in the classroom. It explores the feeling of pessimism through hope. It describes the feelings and thoughts of a student under the influence while in math class. The tone I use in this voice is very strung out so to create a mood of drowsiness and almost confusion, as though drunk. The constant statements of time are supposed to represent the multiple times a student will look at the clock when they want to leave the class. The shift in tone near the end displays the bittersweet image of going home. This is supposed to represent the idea of the day ending, it is a sign of hope, an image of relief in a time of frustration. My goal in this poem was to gain sympathy and understanding between people who struggle or have a hard time conforming to daily school routines and methods of learning and those who run classrooms and teach under these conditions.

The last poem that you will see is the Ekphrastic poem. An Ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or a work of art. The work of art I examined in my ekphrastic poem is the painting Mirror, Blood Red by Gerhard Richter. This piece of art was made and released in 1991. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the qualities of this painting, I hoped to amplify and expand its meaning. I specifically concentrated on the

My growth has come down to my metaphors and use of rhetorical strategies and literary devices to create meaning in my poetry. Creating the audio products and visual projects for each poem I feel helped add to the depth and meaning behind the poems and gave them more context. I valued the amount of thought and time that was dedicated to each poem and each project to perfect it. Usually, I have gone through poetry units and had them end feeling rushed and creatively exasperated. Freestyle gave time for the creative process and I definitely enjoyed this.

Like most Projects, The photo haiku began in english with actually writing a haiku. This haiku could be written on any topic as long as we had the three parts every haiku needed. These parts are the kireji (cutting word), the seven five seven syllable pattern, and lastly the kigo which would be the implied season.

From here, we continued in design by staging a photo shoot and attempting to find pictures which interpret our concept statement. My concept statement is exploring the feeling of determination through the experience of accepting others who are different. I chose to photograph a couple who was currently in the midst of unpacking after moving. I feel as though this visual is often forgotten or unfamiliar to those who have not moved a lot. This is where the idea of others who are different come in.

Finally in Digital media we recorded our performance of the poem and mixed with other sounds and background music. Here is where I felt we had the most creativity aside frtom actually making the haiku as we got to choose our music and record our own interpretation of the haiku. I also felt this helped deliver the message I was trying to portray in my haiku as performance is often a large part of poetry/literature in general.

The applications I used to produce this photo haiku were Pro Tools, and Adobe Animate. I used Pro Tools for recording the performance of my haiku and used pro tools also for the background music. Adobe Animate was used in order to pair the visuals such as the title page, and photo haiku with the audio of the poem and music.

I definitely enjoyed using Pro Tools in this way. I never used any sort of program for recording music or audio in general, I’ve only ever made live music with instruments. I definitely felt this opportunity was eye opening concerning the world of production and audio recording. If I could do this project again I would probably have taken a better quality picture and edited it with skills that I know now.

The Experimental Music assignment was a freelance project which we were given many days to compose. Within the project we had to have up to a minute and a half of music which was at very least consistent with a beat. This sort of music could have lyrics, be completely instrumental, have as many or as few instruments as desired, the limits were endless.

For my Experimental Music assignment I composed a three and a half minute long punk song with two other people who do not attend freestyle as students. These people are Julianne Wilson (Bass Player), and Matthew Taylor (Drummer) who is actually the film teacher at freestyle. Simply put, I would not have been able to do this project without there talent and collaborative effort so much thanks to them!

The inspiration for this song came greatly from the amount of punk music I had recently been listening to. I wanted to create a song that closely resembled classic 90’s punk such as the Ramones, The Sex Pistols, NOFX, Suicidal Tendencies, and other bands. I felt as though an appropriate theme that punk often resembled then was the high school outcast vs jock situation. I wanted to take a spin on this common theme and instead wrote about the situation of a homosexual male vs a homophobic jock to make the music more 21st century. The tone of the music is highly playful and sarcastic but also very edgy and controversial by throwing heavy insults in a nonchalant tone. The mood is very angry and angsty as most punk is due to the fast tempo, moderate distortion, and aggravated tone of voice I use while singing.

When Creating the piece of music I personally wrote both the lead vocalists, lead guitar, and bass part. The Drum part was written by the Mr. Taylor himself. After rehearsing the song the entire band went into the studio and each instrument was wired to its proper input in the recording booth. The guitar was plugged into the amp which was plugged into an iso box. This allowed both the bass and guitar to play with the drums all at once and record all at once.

An Iso box is a piece of recording equipment that is used to redirect the sound from the amp into a more confined speaker in a confined box that has a microphone in it. This isolates the sound and stops any other instruments from bleeding into the guitars track. For example, the drums, without an iso box, would most likely be heard and evidently recorded in the guitar track because of how loud they are. After recording all the instruments together I personally went into the recording booth and recorded vocals. The track for vocals was separate from all the instruments.

After recording everything in the studio, every track was then edited by normalizing, and cutting any unnecessary part of all the tracks. Every track was also EQ and had their volume either boosted or cut. EQ stands for Equalizer. This is very important in how a track sounds because it will either make it sound deeper, higher, more punchy, bland, snappy, etc. EQ, technically speaking, either boosts or cuts the amount of a certain frequency that is let through, cutting low frequencies means the lower vibrations from every note will be either lowered or completely muted depending on how you shape the EQ.

The production of my Experimental Music was definitely the most engaging project I have ever worked on at school in general. Music, being an immense passion of mine, was something I’d hoped I would be able to expand on and learn more about in freestyle. Sure enough the Experimental Music project came along and I took the process by the horns. I made deadlines for myself, kept my creative process organized, and worked out of school on composing this piece of music. In the end I had completely finished this project a week earlier than when it was due. I valued this learning experience so much because it so closely resembled an aspiration I would hope to pursue in the future.

Exploring the feeling of joy through pain

The Design Conceptual Art assignment was to create a piece of art that has a strong concept or meaning. This meaning is usually more important than the actual presentation of the art itself. For this piece of art I used the mediums of Photography and Photoshop. The most difficult part of this process was actually taking the picture as it took over 70 shots to acquire the right type of photograph I wanted to edit. Once I took the photograph into photoshop It took a lot of trial and error to see which sort of filters, lighting, and edits I wanted to apply to the actual photo. The goal of this Project was to find meaning through the art of photography.

I feel as though I became much more appreciative of not only Photography, and Elements of Design but of art in general. As we traveled to the SF MOMA I took what rules of photography and art I knew and applied them to the interpretations of each piece of art I saw. The result was that I could feel a deeper connection to the artist and be further affected by their artwork. This was extremely valuable to me as I greatly admire artists, musicians, and writers alike, so being able to more adequately and accurately interpret their work is extremely important for me.

“My mouth hurt to keep it closed, it burnt, it was almost sealed shut but I left a crack | I missed a single crack and then the piece of apple wouldn’t stay | I wanted it to, I wanted it more than anything in the world” - From the Poem Oranges To Apples. My concept statement is exploring the feeling of joy through pain. These couple of lines in the poem easily symbolize this concept statement and the idea that happiness is something to work for either through pain or is something worth pain. The statement which these lines are trying to make, in my opinion, suggest that some pleasures in life are harmful whether it be to your spiritual, mental, physical, or emotional being but in the end are worth the pain in a personal sense. Some examples are the use of drugs and alcohol, they are harmful but to some are worth the pain and danger. The title of this piece is a play on the title of a beatles song which refers to brighter days being around the corner. The photo is titled “Here Comes the Sun”

In the photo itself you will find a sunflower being hanged. The rope is tied into a noose. The noose is used to symbolize the idea of self-harm, addiction, and even suicide. These forms of pain are self inflicted and often done so for the sole purpose of finding happiness or experiencing pleasure. The Sunflower is a symbol of happiness and the idea of joy, life, rejuvenation, and positivity in general. Puting the sunflower in the position of being hanged gives the impression that being a symbol of happiness or simply being happy comes through pain and is worth pain. Some Difficulties I had trying to take this picture was the staging of the two objects. It was often difficult to find where to attach the hanging flower.