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.