Final Project

Laura and I took (borrowed) lines from every classmate's blog and used them as lyrics in a song that we wrote. For the amount of time spent on this project and how we went about creating it I am proud to say that I am proud of it. Yes there are still some technical mistakes and the audio isn't mixed to radio standards but the idea still stands.


Undertheinfluence by goodnightlights

Inspiration Project

For this project Dara told me to find some music that relaxes me and try to create something from that. Often times the most relaxing music for me is music that reminds of something in the past or some part of my life. It's sort of the nostalgic feeling that relaxes me. It can take my mind off whatever is happening and bring back memories of something else. Once I fell asleep listen to a certain cd and now every time I listen to it I get really relaxed but mostly tired. I decided to listen to some music as I was taking a nap. During that nap I had a few dreams. I decided to take the dream that I remembered best and recreate it in a video. This video is not exactly what my dream was but it's pretty close to what I remember it being. I thought it would be cool to shoot a video that recreates a dream that I had while sleeping listening to music no matter how random or unordered it was (and it is very random).

In this dream I dreamed that lights somehow worked without needing electricity and that I needed to go somewhere with one of them. That is all I remember of it.

This was "filmed" with my mom's crappy point and shoot camera. Please bare with the cheesy/bad editing and randomness. It was just a dream after all, anything can happen.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs3reOSJCc

class reaction 11/15/10

I feel like during class my ability to contribute ideas doesn't work right. But then right after class my mind floods with different thoughts on the topics that get discussed. Not sure why this is....

Anyways,

I do not think your secrets define you. At least I don't think my secrets define me. All the things that I don't want people to know are normally mistakes I've made or things I regret being involved in, thats why they are secrets obviously. They are who I used to be and things I used to identify myself with. They do not define me currently. If everyone knew all of my secrets I would be percieved completely different then who I'm trying to be. You are defined by what you want to be defined as. I'm not saying I want to be someone I'm not or someone I can't be. I identify myself by what I want do and who I want to be with currently. Not by some secret from who I was.

Identity

For this project I decided I want to completely rebuild my electric guitar that I've had since I was 14. There are many things and people that I identify myself with and one of them is music. I felt this would represent it well once I finished it. I've started by stripping out all of the old electronics and parts that weren't needed.

As you can see it's not a very pleasant thing to look at. But once I order the new electronics and repaint it I want it to look something similar to this but maybe with a little more flair.

I had never thought of doing this until this project came along. I'm hoping to be finished with it in the next few weeks.

11/8 class reaction

When I first walked into the art exhibit, without knowing anything about it, the first it made me think of was dreams. It felt like I had walked into a dream. Everything seemed just a little off to be real life but it would fit right in if I was dreaming. The random octopus, the little wood fort, the clouds and the ominous music playing in the back ground made for a very unreal experience. It was really cool. I actually ended up going back there today to check it out.

Bliss/Final Project

When I found out about this project I really had no idea what I wanted to do. I really didn't want to spend money doing something. Laura and I decided to go to my house to figure out something to do from there. After getting there we sat down and started making up a song. We didn't plan on that but thats what happened and three hours went by very quickly somehow. A cool final project idea came out of that. We want to finish writing the song and then make a video to go along with the song. I want to use After Effects or Motion to make the video and since I don't the either of those programs very well I figure this will be a good learning opportunity. Also it could be fun to post this on Youtube and see where it goes once its done.

What Is It Exercise

I think the point of this exercise was to teach us that sometimes randomness can be a very creative tool. Just like bullshit is sometimes good, randomness is the same. Making something completely random means that you have no control over the outcome. When you take that aspect away from it there is no way you can mess it up, being a human after all. And if you can't mess it up, the final product can't be bad. Why do you think abstract art works so well, its mostly random. This is of course not always the case. But if you can do something randomly other much better ideas can spawn from that. I find if I'm in a creative block randomness can often inspire something great.

 I think the stuff that was in class was just a collection of complete randomness. It was like someone had collected the most random pictures, notes, ads and artwork they could find and threw them together in a package. Not only were the items selected at random the items themselves were completely random. After all, right before Beth showed it to us, we did an exercise on randomness. The items must of had something to do with randomness.

oct 25 reaction

My reaction to class on monday was mixed. I left very confused about the next assignment but the discussion made me do some thinking. So far my portfolio has just been class projects and a few random personal project endeavors. I've just thrown the project in my portfolio just how it was when I submitted it in class. I haven't done anything to make them better. But monday got me thinking that if I really want to have a polished portfolio I need to keep working on these projects. Every one of them still needs work and everything can always be improved. I plan on working on these when I have free time.

I really enjoyed everyones projects. Even the bullshit ones, because bullshit is enjoyable sometimes.

You Call It Blog

For this project we went and bought lunch for a homeless man named Anthony. He was sitting just off the Circle downtown next to a Jimmy Johns and a Qdoba. We asked him if he wanted lunch and he just acted really surprised and said yes. We asked him if he wanted anything from either of those two restaurants. I guess he had never been to either of them cause he had no idea what they served. That was a bit We ended up buying him a burrito and then talked to him for a bit.
This was an extremely touching experience. It made me think about all the stupid things I care so much about when its not really even worth worrying about. It made me much more thankful for the life I have. Anthony's face looked kinda dull and sad when we walked up to him at first. When we left I definitely noticed he was smiling and there was much more joy in his expression. After we left we decided to do this every week for Anthony if we can find him or for some one else that needs it.

10-11-10 Class Response

I was very impressed to see that everyone in the class respects others views completely. Nothing got out of hand even though there was many different beliefs. From my own experience, that never happens in conversations about religion. Personally I don't really believe anything at this point in my life and I am completely content with that. I guess I do believe that there is a god that created life. It just hasn't ever been tangible in my life. So I really have no reason to believe I should serve a god. That still brings in the question of what happens when we die. But honestly I don't worry about it that much. I'm totally content with where I'm at right now.

Importance

Sometimes you really have no idea whats important to you until you've lost it. At this point in my life the thing that sits above everything else is relationships. Up until the summer after I graduated high school I really didn't see this. It was only after I screwed up a friendship or didn't see someone for a long time that made me realize how important they really were. I've realized making an effort to spend time with people or loving them when they need it the most is one of the few things that will bring you true joy. I believe we were created to live with each other and not alone. As soon as I started neglecting that, I didn't function right. We as people need each other to survive. We feed off of others ideas and actions. There are many things that I care about like school, music, earning money but a friendship will always take priority in my life.

10/4/2010 class response

Today was the best class so far this semester. As to why I'm really not sure. I'm completely drawing blanks. I think the mixture of serious and light conversation really made the time worthwhile. Part of me is really looking forward to next weeks class because I really want to hear what people have to say. The other part doesn't even want to go because its hard for me to share what I really believe sometimes. Often times when I share those type of things I feel very stereotyped. Like "oh, he's one of those". I guess its another fear that I have. I would rather be liked by people.

Fear Experiment

Fear comes from the unknown. For this project I wanted to experiment with having people not know something. My plan was to bring in a balloon and stand up front and pop it. But I was the only one who knew when it was going to be popped. This type of thing makes me very nervous cause I think the loud pop will make me jump and since I can't anticipate the pop it makes me afraid of it. I hypothesized that it would make people nervous. Unfortunately, someone else in the class had a similar idea to mine and what I was going to do actually got discussed after she did her experiment. That is, not knowing when the next pop was going to be. Basically I just ended up randomly popping mine balloon amidst all the chaos that was going on and it made a few people jump a bit. I don't think being startled like that really counts as fear. Maybe if you were afraid of being startled that would be a fear but being startled itself is not a fear in my opinion. I think if I had done the experiment the way I planned I could have succeeded in making people fearful. If I were to do the experiment I would have had people blindfolded and then performed the experiment. That would have blocked the sense of sight making people know even less about what was going to happen.
The experiment that had the most impact for me was the mouse one. I think I've only seen a real mouse once or twice in my whole life. So I've definitely never held one. When I first saw it I was somewhat afraid of it cause it was small and fast. It made me even more nervous when I heard it was gonna get passed around. After holding the mouse it really wasn't as bad as I thought. It was kinda cool to actually conquer a fear.

9-27-10 class

Today's class was mostly chaos. A mouse was involved along with many loud noises and mind testing. Many rabbit trails were gone on and straying from the topic at hand happened every 5 seconds. But it's fun, I have to admit. The class ended on a dark note when we listened to the scary noises on youtube. I think that was the only thing that gave me a little sense of fear the whole class time. I hate watching scary movies  mostly because I fear being scared I guess. Those sounds reminded me of something from a scary movie and since it was supposedly real life it made me cringe a bit.

My Hypothesized Outcome

I think when I do my experiment people will get really nervous and then jump. Some people might not do anything at all depending on if my subject is something people are afraid of.

9-20-10 class

I was so relieved when Beth said "go home now" right at about 4:30. Not that I don't enjoy the class, because I really do enjoy it. At that moment I just really wanted to go home and my wish was suddenly granted. It was really cool I thought to have a wish granted. That doesn't normally happen alot.
The class time itself was mostly on the topic of fear. I always have a little bit of fear whenever I have to present my ideas or projects in front of others. Its ironic that I'm going to have a slight fear about presenting my project on fear in front of the class. I don't know if it's a real fear of mine cause it mostly just translates into nervousness which is one of the most uncomfortable states for me to be in.

The ferret was cute.

Our Digital Sense

If I had another sense I would want it to be a digital sense. This type of sense would be able to receive and interact with digital signals from a device similar to how an antenna receives television signals. In fact, if we had this sense we would be able to receive television signals. We wouldn't necessarily see or hear the the signal, our minds would just perceive or interpret it. We could still hear and see the result of the digital signal we just wouldn't be using our eyes or ears to do that. It would be very similar to dreaming except we could control it. This would revolutionize the way we interacted with computers or anything digital.
The device I would create would be a car that you could drive with your mind. The car would have a computer inside of it that would be connected to all of the car's basic controls. Since computers are digital devices and we can give and receive digital signals with our new digital sense, we could virtually drive the car with our minds. This free's up the need for a steering wheel, pedals or drive sticks. It would be a very pleasant and relaxing way to drive if you didn't have to physically control anything. Have you ever needed both of your hands to do something else besides controlling the steering wheel while you were driving? Well, with this new digital sense that luxury would be yours.

Inspiration Blog

Friday I was at the Apple store, in the fashion mall, looking around just for fun. As I was leaving it dawned on me that a completely virtual store inside of the mall would be just about as cool as the Apple store and maybe even cooler. It would work the same way as it did in the AVL building. But this time you could actually virtually "pick up" any thing you saw and buy it. I'm not sure how they would get you the physical item that you bought but the experience would be really fun.

Later that day I tried walking backwards. After about thirty seconds it got very difficult. It was even harder to run backwards and probably dangerous. I believe with practice I could get better at it.

Field Trip

Monday we took a tour of the AVL building to experience some of the new, emerging technologies going on at our school. I had taken the same tour before back in my freshman year but this time it was much different. Many of the technologies had improved dramatically. We saw a super hi-def display, a 3d scanner, and Chauncy's capstone project renovation. But my favorite part of the tour was the 3d cave where you could actually control where you went in a 3d environment. As Chauncy explained each attraction it completely blew my mind how innovative all of it was. The tour really challenged me to start thinking outside the realms of audio and video and made me start thinking more about the future.

The Egg Assignment

I heard a good deal about the egg assignment from various people who had taken seeing sideways previously so I had already done some brainstorming. Basically I had three good ideas and a bunch of other really bad ones. The first good idea was to take the egg, put it on the floor in the middle of the campus center, during lunch time, and watch the outcome. After thinking this over there were a few problems that arose with this idea. I then moved on to the second idea which was to attach a homemade parachute to the egg, drop it off a really high building a see if the egg survived. Immediately after I came up with that the thought of it possibly landing on someone's head in the middle of the day didn't sound pleasing to me.
Both of these ideas seemed cool but I decided it would be better if I could actually control the outcome. I also wanted to relate it some how to something I've learned in New Media.
My favorite area in this major is sound production so I tried to tie it in with that somehow. I started by simply recording the sound of me breaking the egg onto a plate. After experimenting with all the crazy sound effects that I could put on an egg I came up with the idea to make a beat with just egg sounds.
The first sound was the sound of the egg hitting the plate and the second was the egg breaking. I decided to try and make the first one sound like a bass drum. By adding various audio filters and changing the pitch I believe I accomplished that somewhat. I even tried to record the progression of going from the starting sound to the ending sound.
The second sound I used was the egg breaking which oddly enough sound a lot like a clapping sound. So I copied and pasted the first sound and the second sound in different spots it the software program and eventually came up with a really lame sounding beat. But, in the creation of it, every thing I did was something that I had learned the sound classes here at school. It was a fun learning experience for me. I guess you could say I "beat the egg"(lame attempt at a pun-type joke)

First Day Of Class

Yesterday was the first session for the Seeing Sideways class this semester. After 15 minutes of being there I knew this class was going to be well worth my time. But as soon as the teacher said she wouldn't be teaching us any software I knew it was going to be a blast and not just beneficial. I feel very comfortable sharing ideas in front of other people in this class. Beth immediately created a sense of involvement by putting us in a circle and having a conversation with us instead of just lecturing. It was fun. I think this may be the first 2 hours and 40 minute class that I can sit through without taking a trip to Boringville.