University.

      A stop motion video includes taking quick consecutive photos, and placing them together in order to make it appear as if it were a video. This stop animation has more than 700 photos in it and lasts almost 3 minutes. I used the instrumental of the song "I'm a Loner" by "CNBlue". In it features the life of a university student; and instead of working hard all day studying, we see that he spends his day on the computer and then playing on his psp. Not that he doesn't try to study, since he surrounds himself with his textbooks, he'll learn that it's important to study. But for now, it's just his first year, and what first year doesn't spend his first semester relaxing?

100 hairstyles.

In today's world of celebrities and hollywood obsession, stars do a lot to try to grab a hold of your attention, and to hang unto it. With so many new stars popping up, it's difficult to keep track of them all, which leads to competition in their efforts to catch our attention. This photo to the left is a collage of photos made by a fan that stars Jang Geun Suk, the star of the korean drama You're Beautiful where he play Hwang Tae Kyung, the leader of a rock band. The photo shows 90 photos (which is almost a hundred) where the male stars different hairstyles in each shot. The idea has become quite popular since there's even another image that has a collage featuring a different celebrity (G-Dragon) on the web.


It must have taken a lot of time and effort to compile together.

Without U Music Video

Song: Without U

Artist: 2PM

English Translation: I'm gonna be strong

Fine, breaking up is better
This was going to happen between us anyway
You were going to do this anyway
This is better, better than falling deeper in love anyway
I think of it as fortunate, that's why I'm okay

I gave you all my all
I believed you so I gave you my all
But you threw that away
I gave you my everything
So I'm gonna be okay

I'm gonna be okay
I'll be okay
Gonna be okay
Baby without you
Without you
Baby without you
Without you

Without you, I'll be cooler
More cooler
I'm going to stand up
Without you
I'll live on
Without you

Listen, everything happens for a reason
Everything happens for a reason
This is the last time you'll meet another man
Your words don't even make sense
Just turn around
It hurts me too much
I don't want to see you anymore

I was being fooled all this while
I didn't even know who you were
But I know now
You don't know love
So that's why I'm gonna be okay

Gonna be okay
I'll be okay
Gonna be okay
Baby without you
Without you
Baby without you
Without you

Without you, I'll be cooler
More cooler
I'm going to stand up
Without you
I'll live on
Without you

Why are you doing this to me, why?
Why do you have to do this to me, make me cry?
Was it enough to throw everything we had?
All of the times we were together
And the times we can never be together again
Aren't they wasteful, to you?
Does it not matter to you?
Even now, are you okay without me?

I'm gonna be okay
Gonna be okay
I'll be okay
Gonna be okay
Baby without you
Without you
Baby without you
Without you

Without you, I'll be cooler
More cooler
I'm going to stand up
Without you
I'll live on
Without you

The video above came about while creating a music video for any song of our choice. With the song, Without U the artists sing about being cheated on by someone that they love. We used various scenes to portray this emotion; having the protagonist run away after seeing his girlfriend cheating on him, but while he does this he also looks back. This shows remorse, and regret; sadness at having his trust betrayed and that even though he sees this he still has trouble forgetting about her and all their times spent together. Taking the scenes shot of both the protagonist and his girlfriend being happy, we took them and compared them with the antagonist and the protagonists girlfriend. Showing that even though they appear to be happy in the scenes, the girl is unfaithful and is sharing the same activities with someone else.

Take Drama!

 

Through various technigques, I attempted to create an effective advertising poster. The purpose of this poster was to encourage students at this high school to take the Drama Course; in any or all four years of their high school career.To begin, the title of the course (Drama) was typed across at the top of the poster; where the contrasting bright yellow made in stand out. This allowed the viewer to understand what the poster was trying to get across immediately. The main focus was to bring attention to the aspects in the drama curriculum. These main focuses included it's overall extravagance: the competitions and the tournaments that as a student you could participate in or even win! Another was the importance of costume design; where student either used clothes from old school years, or purchased and created other costumes to be used in order to further display a sense of character in acting. And the last point to outline was puppetry, and ventriloquy which was another unit in the curriculum. This includes projecting your voice on a inanimate  object, without it being obviously made that the voice was coming from you.

Creaking Steps

With this design, I attempted to portray sound without onomatopoeia's or words, but with just visual representation alone. For the final product, I chose to use the sound of creaking steps, late at night while the rest of the house was dormant. I portrayed this with a girl sneaking down the stairs, and yellow to bring the attention to the foot reaching for the next step. Hopefully, the yellow (since it contrasts with the dark black elsewhere) will draw your attention to my 'sound'. (:

My Dream and I

My Dream and I – Reset

With every day that goes by
It sure gets lonely in this
This world of mine
This state of nothingness
Keeps on eating me
Will I succeed?

I can't help but wonder
What chapter is next
I think I can't stop thinking
My mind just needs a rest
'Cause everyone around me
Has lost their mind
Me they think I'm crazy,
'Cause I'm real

I don't have to think
It's under my skin
No one can stop my dream and I

I can't sleep, I'm in too deep
These thoughts are scaring me away
But you don't understand
It seems like no one can
Am I insane?, Am I to blame?

It seems every day
I loose more inspiration
Amount of motivation
My life is going nowhere

With everyday that goes by
It sure gets lonely in this
This world of mine
I will succeed, I will succeed

(x2)
I don't have to think
It's under my skin
No one can stop my dream and I

Lyrics taken from: songmeanings.net

Explanation Paragraph

                The song titled “My Dream and I” by the band RESET revolves around dreams. While there are many different types of dreams, different variations and ideas of what they are to a person, this song seems to be talking about a goal that one wishes to accomplish. The song progresses almost in story form, where it begins at a state where the persona is afraid, to the end of the song where the persona almost seems to be unstoppable where he says “No One Can Stop My Dream and I”. While portraying this song in my photomontage, I began with a girl who was standing on water. With this, I tried to show how fragile she was, the different between planting both feet firmly on the ground compared to standing on water, with ripples on the surface. At the same time, I placed a bench behind her which makes it appear as if she is getting up from where she was sitting, which makes the unreal setting of her walking on water appear to be almost a normal incident for the teenager since the bench would portray a habit, something that has been placed somewhere for convenience because of frequent visits.

                In the next stanza, the story continues to say that everyone around is crazy, the feeling of isolation and not belonging. I tried to portray this with the entire image, the shoreline to show that she was somewhere far out, and the lack of people around her to show that she was by herself. Her walking expresses her restlessness, her posture showing that she was up and perhaps pacing instead of sitting down, relaxing with little or no cares in the world. I continued to portray her lost dream by placing a flower in the background; since a flower is often used to show something beautiful which in this case is the dream that she is thinking about but can’t quite seem to get a hold of, or the courage to pursue it. This is why I placed the flower and the girl facing opposite directions, to show their distance from each other, and how instead of going towards it, she is instead walking away from it. However, at every chorus of the song it continues to say that the persona (who in this case is a she) refuses to give up at the same time that she is beginning to lose hope. In trying to portray this, I placed the reflection of the girl in the water facing the other direction so it appears as if her reflection, or her conscious is pursuing her dreams anyway, or at least has a strong desire to do so.

Bet We Can Smoke the Most

Title: Bet We Can Smoke the Most

Artist: Klaus Steak

Date: 1982

In this image you see a cigarette standing with factory towers that are emitting pollution into the atmosphere. The cigarette is enlarged so that it is the same size as the other towers (since cigarettes are usually pretty tiny) and there is a mass of smoke near the bottom of the page, which seems to add to the polluted and unhealthy theme. There are bold red words over the picture and it reads "Wir Rauchen um die Wette" which means "Bet We can Smoke the Most". You see the factory building in the background, and I noticed that the image only has industrial objects and there is no sign of nature. When I first saw this image, my eyes were drawn to the cigarette at the center and then I moced on the red words, before further looking at the background and other parts of the image. My first thought was that the photo's intention was probably to compare a cigarette to pollutants and how they are unhealthy and bad for people. I thought it was a strong message since it made a very strong comparison, where instead of showing people who had suffered from tobacco addiction, he used a different tactic that aws just as effective.

This photo uses emphasis, where the almost grayscale photo contrasts with the bold red words near the center of the image. You can also see this emphasis on the cigarette, the 'odd' tower that isn't black like the rest however it stands in line with the other towers. The cigarette is placed in the center, and it acts as a path that leads the author's eyes down to the red words near the bottom. Steak also uses lines and asymmetry with the towers, You see the factory building in the background, and I noticed that the image only has industrial objects and there is no sign of nature. When I first saw this image, my eyes were drawn to the cigarette at the center and then I moced on the red words, before further looking at the background and other parts of the image. My first thought was that the photo's intention was probably to compare a cigarette to pollutants and how they are unhealthy and bad for people. I thought it was a strong message since it made a very strong comparison, where instead of showing people who had suffered from tobacco addiction, he used a different tactic that aws just as effective.

Where the almost grayscale photo contrasts with the bold red words near the center of the image. You can also see this emphasis on the cigarette, the 'odd' tower that isn't black like the rest however it stands in line with the other towers. The cigarette is placed in the center, and it acts as a path that leads the author's eyes down to the red words near the bottom. Steak also uses lines and asymmetry with the towers,

Bunny

Using an industrial object, animal or plant, we re-drew the image we chose and experimented with different elements of colour and view.

1. The image was drawn unto the 4x6inch piece of white paper.

2. Cropped closer to the image so that it was closer, however the image was still recognizeable.

3. Crop further into the design until it is unrecognizeable. Can you still tell that this image is a bunny?

4. Invert the image's colors.

5. Redraw image 3, leaving it Black and white, except for one color.

6. Redraw image 3 in full color.

Black Square Problem

Using four black squares, or less in each image we were given the challenge of creatively placing our squares into 4inch by 4inch squares. We would use what we were given to portray six different words: Order, Increase, Bold, Congested, Tension and Playful.

Bold

Congested

Increase

Order

Playful

Tension

The More the Better

Title: The More the Better
Photographer: Nam June Paik
Date: 1988

Written Response:

My initial reaction when I saw this photograph was that my eyes were drawn in to the small white squares of the television screens. I was also drawn in by the shape of the whole object within the photograph, to me; it seemed to resemble a fountain. When I saw this photograph, I didn't understand what it was meant for, since ordinarily the use of television and media in a photograph is usually used in a way to state that media is taking over our lives. I noticed how there was a pattern in the image and the symmetry was pleasing to the eyes.

In this photograph you see a tower shape in the centre of the image, with hundreds of television screens on and piled on top of each other in the shape of a tower. From the top, the rings grow thicker as they progress to the bottom, until on the bottom the screens are so tiny, there are four rows of screens instead of just one. The photo seems to be taken from near the top of the tower looking downwards in a bird's eye view, and there are rings around it that appears to be a part of the building that the tower was constructed inside of. Looking closely at the screens you can see that the screens are repeated channels that come in sets of four and three (the designs themselves are difficult to see). Near the base of the structure, there are four orange lights positioned in a similar semi-circle to the rings above it.

In this photograph we can see dominance, since the object is the largest shape in the picture and takes up the most space. The photographer also used contrast that can be seen in the bright lights of the television sets that contrasts to the dark background behind it. We see space when we 'look down' the photograph so the base of the television set made structure which gives the illusion of distance, and also see that the whole structure is closer to us than the cement rings behind it. There is symmetry in the picture, since if you cut down the middle of the tower-looking structure; both sides appear to be the same. You can also see that the photograph grows darker when we move from the left side to the right side where the shadows are. We see depth in the photograph, since the television screens closer to us appear to be larger than the ones near its base which gives the illusion of the photograph being three-dimensional. There are shapes in the television sets and also shapes in the design of the building where the rings are circles, connected by cylinders. We also see movement in the picture since the picture has so many television screens, the audience imagines that the screens are on and working just as normal ones and that the characters would be moving on the sets. Also, there is the assumption that the flashing pictures would cast lights on the objects around it as the characters moved from dark sets to light sets changing the brightness of the screen, which is another form of movement. The author also creates a path for us to follow since our eyes look immediately to its bright center and moves downwards to where there are more bright television sets. Paik’s materials were television sets, a steel structure and lights near its bottom. I think he chose the television sets to convey his message that he was talking about media, and he chose the steel structure background so that it wouldn’t draw the audience’s attention away from the main aspect of his photo.

The theme of the artwork is media, and it seems to either be saying that we are fully absorbed in media and that the more we use it, the more we appreciate it’s convenience and develop more technologies to better convenience us. I think that is why he chose the title ‘The More the Better”, because he seems to be expressing that technology is good, and most people feel that we should have more. Much like how today, some families have television in each room and six laptops for a three person family. I think the artist is interested in technology and how quickly it seems to be progressing, however it’s difficult to tell if he is interested in the way that he is proud, or if he feels that our growing technology is bad for people and his title is one chosen out of sarcasm.

The artist created his work to show that he believed South Korea was being too desperate in trying to become more well-known as a developed nation. After seeing this my thoughts about the photo changed because I see that the meaning of his title is negative, and he feels that instead of media being a good thing or a bad thing at all, he means that the desire to be seen as a developed country is in the center of Korea’s mind and he feels that it shouldn’t be.

In this image I really like how the photographer user symmetry and contrast in the picture to bring our attention to the object in the center. I feel that the symmetry made the picture seem like two sides of a whole and not something that was incomplete since the whole shape was shown. I also think that the small bits of color on the screen made the photo seem more life-life and not a picture that was taken with a Greyscale setting, but a photo that was taken where there were actually very few colors, which tells you that it was a choice made by the photographer.

Paik, Name June. Nam June Paik Studios; Thursday, September 16. 2010
            <http://www.medienkunstnetz.de.works/wrap-around-the-world/images/8/ >