Assignment 1d

So assignment one is finally coming to a close. As much as I enjoyed this project, I am kind of looking forward to starting something new. So to finish the assignment, Kristen and I came up with a plan of sorts. It just happened to work out that she was going to be out of town the first weekend of the assignment, and I was going to be out of town for the second. So we were able to meet together during the weeks and talk through the project, what we wanted it to look like, what pictures we liked the most, and different techniques we wanted to use. Then on each weekend, we were each able to have a chance to work through pieces of it by ourselves. I think this will be a really good way to make sure we each get to include what we want, but also be able to collaborate together.

Since we have Nate and Barrett's soundscape that is very dreamlike and subjective, we want our images to reflect that mood and tone. So far, our images follow the rhythm and pace of the soundscape, and has a lot of superimpositions and dissolves as transitions to portray the dreamlike state. We will try to stay true to the mood of the soundscape, and enhance and add a new dimension to the tempo and vibe that is already in place.

Assignment 1b

I had a lot of fun making the soundscape. I feel like I learned how to convey what a specific emotion actually feels like, just through a bunch of random noises that were all generated by our class. Our sentence was "she continued yelling from the kitchen", and so as we were working through our soundscape, we really put ourselves into our sentence. What does it feel like to be in an argument? is it always loud, or are their moments of pauses? How does your body react? If this argument is in the kitchen, what other noises would I hear? How would my cooking be effected by anger? These were all questions that we really took seriously when making our soundscape. I honestly did not think I would be able to dive in so deeply to a question that was randomly assigned to us. We began to work our soundscape in a wave form, as we felt like arguments generally move in waves of emotion, from out of control anger, to moments of silence. When I listened to the final soundscape, I felt my body react to the waves of noise in the same way it would in an argument. My heart started beating faster during the loud and chaotically uncontrolled part, and I felt relief and nervousness during the quiet part in anticipation of another wave. Even though our soundscape sounds rather raw since we did not go farther and distort the sounds and put effects on them, I feel that it was appropriate to leave it this way because an argument is just that, raw and messy.

two nice pictures

Duplicating Reality
This image had copyright protection on it so I couldn't post it, but I really like it so here is the link to it
http://www.robertleon.com/photography/guate_semana_santa.htm

Impressionist Photo

Light Observations

Market St. & 18th St.
Sunlight is streaming through the tree lined street and making a spotted pattern of light and shadow on the road. This pattern is interrupted by the solid blocks of car shadows moving steadily through the street of Jaguar spots. The sun glints off the roofs of cars and straight into my eyes. As the sun hits the front and back windshields of the cars, there are vertical stripes of light and shadow changing rapidly as the cars zoom down the road. In the surrounding trees, light skips around as the breeze blows the leaves gently. The beautiful old houses are mostly in the shade by the protection of porches, while their roofs are bathed with sunlight. Light and shadows dance wildly out of control on the t-shirt of a motorcyclist driving by. A car's turn signal creates its own unnatural light as it flashes orange.

Wallace Park
Shadows from tree leaves bounce along the wooden bridge. The straight, unmoving thick shadows of the wooden bridge beams reflect solidly in the stream below. As fallen leaves float down the top of the stream, their shadow mirrors them on the stream floor. As the water flows gently down, the sunlight makes a rippled pattern that looks almost like shadows of fish scales with an outline of light, moving much quicker as it reflects than the movement of the water itself. The large bushes, shrubs, and grass cast shadows into the edges of the stream. The sun itself casts a painfully reflective bulb in the water. As little water bugs hop across the water, the sun catches on the rings of water they create as it dissipates outward. Dragonflies and birds flying over head create undefined moving shadows up and down the stream.

Assignment 1a

Before doing this part of the assignment, I have probably never paid attention to what it sounds like in a coffee shop. That seems so strange to me, because coffee shops are practically my adopted homes, because coffee is what keeps me ticking. But as soon as we walked into Starbucks, before we even asked permission to record the sounds, I was all of a sudden awakened to a plethora of incredibly interesting noises that I have taken for granted for years. All of a sudden the blending of ice, the squishing of syrup, the sound of coffee brewing, the loud hum of the steamer, were now not just annoying conversation interrupters, but individual fascinating noises that had a life of their own. I immediately started thinking of what each noise sounded like, how it could be applied as a sound effect in a film. The syrup sounded like stepping in squishy mud, or even like guts splattering. The harder I listened, more subtle sounds came to life that are not quite as obvious. The sound of shifting in a chair, the slurping of coffee, the noise of a straw moving in a plastic cup, and the tapping of feet were all a part of this cafe orchestra that has I have always had a deaf ear to, but has nonetheless been present every day in every Starbucks coffee shop.