Written Project Plan
After many days of thinking through what I want to accomplish, I realized that the initial idea I had completed was cool, and fun, but that I wanted to tackle something more meaningful.
My first idea was to put myself into the popular online game, Among Us. Not only because it's a fun game, but because it has many great memories attached to it. Friends would come together from different states, all to join a call and enjoy each other's company. When one of our friends left to join the navy, it really hit me how important that time was to spend together, of course now that it's gone.
The problem I came across while working is that, there's so much emotion behind it, but in the video itself, it comes off completely different. It seems cheesy, and unrealistic. Which has no remote connection to the thought process. So when others view it, without explanation, it would be pretty meaningless. I can't have that.
So my new idea, was to go back to my roots. I've been making videos for a while now on TikTok, which I never thought would gain as many views as it did. All the videos are pretty much me acting out the lyrics to a song in my own interpretation, or one that the artist has confirmed.
The game plan is to GET CREATIVE!! With transitions, ideas, explanations. I'm so excited. It'll take a lot of work but will be so worth it in the end.
With both of these ideas, there is so much potential for cultural criticality of the media that you are choosing to participate in. Your first idea, for example: While it's difficult to visualize what your experiments ended up looking like, the emotional strain and inherent disparity between the imagery and the weight of your memory is so interesting. How could a piece of moving image do justice to this feeling in general? It makes me think of virtuality versus reality in general—we can't ever know where the deep undulations of our minds go, even when we're engaging in something entirely separate, at least on the surface, like gaming. This psychology is very rich, and I wonder if a project could somehow do justice to it. Simply adding voiceover, perhaps? Text on screen? These are ways to both show the visual reality that you are trying to represent, while also taking us out of that reality to address broader overarching themes of memory, loss, nostalgia, or even isolation and introversion. This below video reference might miss the mark somewhat, but I strongly encourage you to take a look to get some ideas. Jon Rafman is a digital/intermedia/internet artist that I've shown earlier in the semester. This particular piece uses images extracted from a first-person-shooter video game, with a very poetic voiceover about memory. Maybe you can watch it during class time and we can discuss!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ubu.com/film/rafman_digging.html