spot welding

Motion Graphics Reactions:

"Do me a favor, and stick your project in a box, and bury it, would you? it's making us look bad."
- Olivia

Yes, the review went really well. Josh was up until 6 editing that morning, and it showed. The piece came out pretty much exactly as we had imagined it. Now we just have to sort out the sounds.

Speaking of sounds, our sound project is getting desperate. Tomorrow is our last day to put something together before the review on Wednesday, and we don't really have any material!
I am meeting Emma at 10 am and trying to get some stuff recorded. Hope it goes well. Just have to re-gain our enthusiasm.

Sounds like a load of crap

I do not like this sound project.

It is very annoying, and I think that I could be putting my efforts into the motion graphics project, and my typography projects, which could be really really amazing if I could focus on them more.

Anyway, after meeting with my group this evening, and trying to build that damn foxhole radio unsuccessfully, I am really down beat.

Instead, we think we should go around on Tuesday, and record people's mobile phone conversations without them knowing. Also, the sounds of their phones ringing. In the background, we can have the mobile interference noise, and maybe keypad noises of people dialing.

We can start out gradually. First a ringing and a hello. Then we build up with more noises/ conversations, until it becomes a really hectic, busy sound representing the fact that everyone on the world is constantly connecting and using their mobile phones.

This covers all three aspects of the project. It explores location, documentary (in that we are recording actual conversations), abstraction (we are creating a piece, overlaying, and meshing sounds), and narrative (telling a story/ making a point by having just one voice, then many voices/ chaos building up).

After getting back to the halls at 10: 30 pm, I finally ate dinner, and started bending wires to make my message for my bubble type. It's 12: 46 am right now, and I have to be at uni at 9:45 for the motion graphics review with a bottle of wine for the banquet. Where does the time go? I think I'm calling it a night.

Bubble Type

Preparing the wire frame letters for my bubble type. Started yesterday, but had to stop until I got a pair of pliers/ wire clippers. I have procured said tools and now I can commence the crafting!

Well, after I spend a good amount of time with my sister and Justin and Jamie while they're in town :)

I have a camera booked (thank you David Barnett!) from Tuesday evening until Friday of next week, so I can film during the night for the lantern type, and during the day for the bubbles.

Thankful Every Day

I decided that last night would be a perfect time to test out the flying lanterns. I had friends and family in town, and was celebrating a Thanksgiving abroad with one of my best friends from New York.

So, what to write as a message on this lone flying lantern?

I thought about writing out what specifically I was thankful for this year, but there were way too many things!

So instead I decided on this message:

..and the story reveals itself

(filming for the motion graphics project continues.)

Film within a film within a film...

Intelligent design storyboard started out looking like this:

But now, we're going with something more like this:

First, Morgan draws Emma. Then, we see that the drawing of Emma comes to life, and Emma is making a model of Morgan, who is still drawing Emma. Then we see that Josh is filming Emma making Morgan, and we see that Morgan is drawing a picture of Josh filming Emma and Morgan...

and if everything goes terrible, it's ok, because according to creationism, it's all been planned out. Everything has already happened, so we can't actually do anything wrong. How convenient!

Motion Graphics Brainstorm

Peckham is over and done with! The film night was fun, and it was great to see all the films in succession. They worked quite well together, and a lot of people commented on how they got a new perspective on the neighborhood.

So, it's time for moving on to other projects!

First, we shared our ideas for the sound identity project. The tutors liked the idea of taking things apart, however it does not fit in with the theme of location. We will try and move ahead with our idea of sending a recording device through the mail. Also, I think that the layering of voices saying a phrase will also be nice. We could just ask people in a certain location to speak for us.

We had a good chat with a tutor today who gave us some great inspiration for the motion graphics project. We concluded that we were taking the assignment too literally. The blueprints and claymation that we had initially thought about were kind of cliche.

Instead, we started thinking about all of the things that intelligent design implies. This means that everything is pre- determined. That we think we have all of these different possibilities, but really our futures have all been planned out precisely.

Some inspiration:

So, the time has come for story boarding. I don't know when I'm going to fit that in during my trip to Amsterdam, but I'll try.

Sound, motion, type, thesis

Sound identity project:

Spent the day recording various noises. Squirrels and pigeons in the park made some great sounds. The microphone is amazing. It picks up so many sounds that you can't hear on your own.

Motion graphics:

Oh goodness. This makes me nervous. We need to get our act together on this one.

Typography:

I bought some flying lanterns yesterday- the kind that have a fuel canister or candle at the bottom, and the heat makes them fly! I want to write a message (one letter on each lantern) and record them flying away. I ordered them online so I have to wait for them to arrive.

I also purchased some wire at the hardware store. I am going to make a big type bubble wand, let the wind flow through it, and of course document it through film. I think it could be really beautiful.

I just have to decide what I will write!

Thesis:

Still waiting on a response from Roy, my professor after revising my outline yesterday. He suggested that I focus more on the visual side of pariedoilia. I took out about 5 books related to the topic of optics and the mind at the LCC library, and met a kid who is colorblind who I might ask some questions to enrich the paper.

I think I will go through the books tonight and pick out some passages that help my argument.

I wanna make a lazer

I realized that what I like about photographing the clouds, and the shadows is their fleeting nature. They are things that you have to capture, or else they disappear.

This gave me more ideas on what I could do in terms of a final project.
I've been doing more thinking about what I want to do for my typography project. It would be amazing to make a typographic hollogram. Or to make laser letters. To make a hologram or a laser, I would need to make a laser. I want to make a laser. I don't think I am technically skilled enough to do so, and I don't know if I have enough money. I also found out that 'laser' is spelled with an 's' and not a 'z'. Whoops.

A light painting like this one might be a cool way to capture the writing, but... it's been done before.

The fact that the letter forms in the clouds and shadows are something that not everybody sees unless you are looking for them made me think of secret messages.

I tried out writing with clear wax on a piece of paper, then passing it to a friend who painted the paper with watercolors to reveal the message.

This gave me the project idea of selecting a few messages, writing them on pages in wax, and sending them off to friends or relatives in different places. I would ask them to photograph them after they revealed the message. This brings in the element of surprise because they don't know what the message says, and I don't know which one I've sent them.

I have also been thinking about working with materials that are very fickle and need to be captured. This made me think of soap bubbles. I could create large scale letter forms out of wire, dip them in bubble solution, wait for the wind, and film/ photograph the whole process. I think that it could yield some very visually interesting results.

serendipity

While thinking deeply about my senior thesis statement, Hugh and I headed to the Design Museum. We decided that we both needed some inspiration.

Upon arrival, we discovered that it was 5 quid to enter, and the museum was much smaller than we had hoped for. However, this one piece of artwork outside gave me all the inspiration I needed.

"Though human genious in its various inventions with various instuments may answer the same end, it will never find an invention more beautiful or more simple or direct than nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous."

- Leonardo Da Vinci

From the perspective of an art/ design student writing an in-depth paper on the limitations of the human mind and understanding, I can't imagine a more fitting quote cast in metal for my consumption.

Hidden Messages

So, someone has already captured the entire alphabet in the clouds:



I am impressed and envious that some woman beat me to it, but I will take it as a blessing in disguise. I realize that the reason I like finding letter forms in the clouds and in shadows is because there is something about their fleeting existence that interests me. One moment they are there, and the next they are not. Some may see the shape but not recognize the letterform. It's all about hidden messages.
So, now I am beginning to research the world of invisible ink, and distorting messages. Thinking more about what exactly it is I want to say. here is the result of a very quick experiment this evening with shadows:

Crits: A Necessary Evil

The day's rundown:

10:00 AM- Lecutre on semiotics and etymology in the upper casket with Frank

12:30 PM- tea break

1:00 PM- Critique with keiron and the rest of the Peckham team in A206

2:30 PM- tea break

5:30 PM- dismissed from Critique

6:45 PM- arrive at Bhav's place in Greenwich

7:15 PM- heartily consume dinner (soup) and snacks

7:30 PM- commence the final editing

11:30 PM- run down the streets of Greenwich with Emma trying to catch the train to London Bridge

12:15 AM- back in the dorms, switch on Misfits.

A very long day indeed. It's 2 AM now. Misfits was awesome!
But yes, Crits are long, and hard (that's what she said!) but a necessary evil. Although there was a lot of tension in the room at some points, there was a lot of good feedback.

We wondered whether or not it was a good idea to show everyone our films ahead of time. Would this make the final screening at the Peckham Multiplex boring? I hope not! I think that there are a lot of groups (including my own) that needed some work, editing, and general finesse.

Plus, a couple of drinks beforehand makes any screening better. Looking forward to an after party puts a nice light on the whole event, too.

In The Editing Room

A dark room with a projector hooked up to a macbook and cups of tea that have been sitting on the desk for a week and a half. This is how Bhav works. Oh wait, the electric blanket is a key component to the equation. It makes the shifty mess a lot more cozy.

Anyway, after the student protest I headed out to Greenwich to help edit the Peckham film for tomorrow. I can't believe how time flew- it's time to turn these films in already! I sat with Bhave from 3pm until about 9pm nit-picking and trying to mesh things together.

I hadn't eaten since around 12, so when I got back to the halls I was so worn out, I put my oyster card up to the building unstead of my key fob and expected it to let me in!

Peck till we can't Peck'em no more.

Unfortunately Emma wasn't able to join Bhav today for what is hopefully our final session of filming in Peckham.
I feel that it may have made a difference if she was there- people seem to open up easily when she is around. However, I think that the combination of the cold rain and the fact that we've been sticking cameras in their faces for weeks now had the guys at Nimba shipping in a pretty grumpy mood. Nobody wanted to talk to us, and we waited around for about 2 hours before we were (reluctantly) given our promised interview with a main component of the business.

Although it was a lot like pulling teeth, I think that we got him to reiterate most of the things that were not clear on our audio recordings before, and it should fill in the little gaps that we need. Plus, Bhav has confirmed that the audio sounds great that we picked up on the Nikon SLR (which we were slightly nervous about).

All in all, not an unsuccessful day, but certainly could have left on a more chipper note. We promised that the next time we saw them, we would be handing them a finished DVD of the film. At least they seemed pleased with that.

The Universe Works in Mysterious Ways

The presentations on Communicating Complexity this morning were great. I think it's because I have always been interested in science. I love chemistry and biology and physics. Oh, physics was so much fun in high school! It was the only time that mathematical equations ever made sense!

I have always been fascinated with human perception, and the fact that our perception is faulty. We try to gather as much as we can about the world around us from the sciences, but there are so many things that we simply cannot imagine, or comprehend.

The biggest question that has prodded man from the beginning of time:
How did we get here?


I love this topic. This, and where we go after we die are two realms where things start to get fuzzy. Mysticism comes into play, scientists start to get really creative, and controversy and speculation reign.

The presentations and discussions that sprung from them reminded me how fervently I love this topic. As I have been putting off thinking about my senior thesis for some weeks now, I have realized that I cannot pass up this serendipitous opportunity. The topic of Intelligent Design was chosen at random from my lovely group partner Emma out of a wooden box. It all ties together so well with my thesis, and I have realized what direction I need to go in.

So far my thesis reads:

Paradolia is a result of a human need to explain and understand the world around them.

I think I would like to take a more mythical approach, and tie in the different ways that people try and explain how we all got here. I want to explore creation myths, intelligent design, evolution, the big bang theory, and other religious or scientific theories that humans come up with to try and make sense of how we came to exist as we are today.

Intelligent Design

Had to rush the presentation for this motion graphics project a little bit since I only got back from Berlin yesterday. Josh seems to somehow be an expert on the subject of ID/ Creationism. Emma and I actually took notes from what he was saying at one point. With him leading the way it was really easy to put the slides in order. Slap on a nice clean typeface, go from black to 60% grey and try to make the visuals interesting yet clean, review your notes, and you've got a decent presentation prepared.

A Film on Scratch Films

Shipping Out

Filmed for about 6 hours today in Peckham. Got some good footage, and some different perspectives on the shipping business. Got hit on by an employee, met a transvestite lorry man (woman?) and did some cheeky shopping at Primark.

Scratchy Monday

I can't believe I've never been exposed to the awesome technique that is scratch film. Leader film can be marked in different ways- the black film can be scratched on to let light through, and the clear film can be drawn on with marker, scratched, or even have bits cello-taped to it.

Film is cut and taped together with a special splicing device. Then the film can then be run through the projector as long as it's not too thick or weak. This is trickier than it sounds, since the projector is a very fragile machine.

We haven't yet been able to see our class's film strung together, but here is a very pretty example from youtube: