Portfolio

Project #1 – Paper

outside view

Here’s the view of our giant fortune-teller from the outside.  We thought the spiral would add some pizazz.  As you can see below, we really wanted to play up paper’s potential for size, tactility, and three-dimensionality, so that was our main tack in making a giant version of something we used to all make in grade school.

me with fortune teller

Here’s the view when you flip it over, and unfold it to show the exterior of all the flaps: “The possibilities for manipulation of paper are endless.”

inside view

Here’s the first flap.  We tried to demonstrate all the various things you can do with pencil and pen.  The sentences around the edges read: “Pencil can be erased, and pen can always be crossed out.  Your reservoir of fonts is limited only by your imagination.  With graphite or ink, one can smudge, bleed, and perform other distortions.  Writing “freehand”, one is not constrained by lines.”

pen and pencil

Next up, we used printouts to examine things from a slightly different perspective.  It reads “Comp. screens have: Limited space, limited fonts, limited texture, limited senses, limited manipulation, limited possibilities!”  Plus, I had to pay to print that page off, so that sucks.  Then, next to some beautifully handpainted trees, we have a picture of trees with the text superimposed: “But nowadays, it’s a frequent concern that paper draws heavily on our natural resources.”

paper flap 2

Next up, my personal favorite.  We wanted to further demonstrate paper’s potential for dimensionality, so we said “paper can be cut through”, and we cut through it.  We glued some newsprint behind to make it look cool, and some creepy guy’s face ended up lurking right underneath the “U”.  Then, it says “Or, [paper] can POP UP!”  I’ll let the picture speak for itself.  It’s pretty friggin sweet.

3d flap

Our last flap showed how paper can engage the other senses.  It’s hard to translate to the nets (obvi), but it says “with some writing utensils, you can even SMELL [which we wrote with smell expo marker] and FEEL [which is painted on in a super-chunky way]”.

smell & feel

Look at that texture!

texture

There you have it!  We’ve done the impossible: translated a project meant only for paper to a blog post.  Actually it wasn’t that hard.

Project #2 – Podcast

We discuss the possibilities for amateur music recording through the context of a song that Patti’s been working on.  Enjoy!

[middmedia FA4A6C0CEFAFF75A5A063A211FE6AA13 thardee Group Project 2.mp3]

Disclaimer: When working through the vocal process with her friend Aubrey, technical difficulties prevented Patti from recording her vocals with the effect we most commonly think of as “Auto-Tune”; instead, a less conspicuous form of pitch correction was used.  But we just really wanted to talk about Auto-Tune!  The Lesson: Though these technologies may be easily accessible to a much wider swath of people than before, there is simply still the obstacle of the knowledge needed to operate software which can often be quite complicated.

Project #3 – Remix Video

Hannah and I made an example of a remix video to show how documentary films strongly rely on the use of pre-existing footage, to tell a story. In addition to this type of remix, we told the story of how YouTube allows new stars to be born, by using footage strictly from YouTube.

The first story is of Justin Bieber, one of the newest singing crazes, topping the charts and number of YouTube views. He got his big break when Usher and Justin Timberlake found his videos on Youtube. The videos he originally posted were of his performances in singing competitions so that friends and family members could watch them.

The second story is of Tay Zonday, singer/songwriter of “Chocolate Rain.” His story is an example of how not only is talent found on YouTube, but people seem to be attracted to whatever is WEIRDEST, which gives birth to a very unusual “star.” Other YouTube users made Tay and “Chocolate Rain” famous by creating their own renditions of the song. Check it all out in our remix documentary.

[youtube CGFyJSNJtXU]

Project #4 – Gaming

I don’t want to preface this too much, but what I’m trying to show in this video is how, though The Sims 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV are similar in that they are ‘open and expressive’, they portray fundamentally different vision of ‘success’ and ‘the American Dream’.  I tried to bring out the humor in this.

[middmedia FA4A6C0CEFAFF75A5A063A211FE6AA13 fmmc0246a-s10 gta vs the sims.mp4]

Project #5 – Final Project

Mark and I made our own pseudo-alternate reality gaming based on Lost, much like the Lost Experience ARG that went down a few years ago.  But really what we created is a screen capture video simulating the experience of playing an alternate reality game, because to really experience one of these games is a process that is spread out over time, and we thought this was the best way to succinctly show how a ‘game’ like this can function, and all the different online venues through which this can occur.

[middmedia FA4A6C0CEFAFF75A5A063A211FE6AA13 fmmc0246a-s10 lost final project.mp4]

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