Second Life Update

Here are my two avatars.  I am working on the face mapping and should have my face transposed onto the characters soon.

I wandered around Second Life and found a cute little Christmas cottage. I haven't added my face to the avatar yet, hopefully we review that in class.

Merry Christmas y'all!!!

Video Orchestra

This is a screen shot of my video orchestra. I titled it Medicine Medley because I believe in the cliche that laughter is the best medicine. I created three videos, one of me typing out hahahahaha, one of Julia Roberts laughter from Pretty Woman and then a clip from the show Friends where I dissected the sound to leave only laughter. The remaining two videos were found on Youtube. I chose the song from Mary Poppins "I Love to Laugh" and a famous viral video of a baby laughing at paper being ripped. The group of videos is designed to make viewers laugh. It displays my love of pop culture and love of optimism.

First Paragraph

In my 30 second video I focused on three main stages of life that are described by the author in his introduction paragraph.  I thought of them as the crayon phase, the map phase and the blue print phase.  My montage displayed the yellow sun, the map of the united states and the blue prints discussed in the text along with the themes of transition, time and growing up.

Films

This video is an imitation of the film "Tunnel" by Thomas Demand.  The tunnel in his film is where Princess Diana died in the fatal car crash of 1997.  I chose to display a tragic location here in Reno.  This crosswalk would not exist if Channel 2 Sports Anchor JK Metzker had not been tragically killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street.  Metzker's death affected the UNR community and opened the eyes to the dangers of walking around campus.  I filmed this using my cellphone camcorder.

Here is the link to the original video...
http://www.ubu.com/film/demand_tunnel.html



This is imitation of William Wegman's film "Deodorant." In his video he makes fun of how unflattering and unrealistic commercials can be. I chose to replicate a typical face wash commercial. In the process I thoroughly embarrassed myself and soaked my kitchen, thus proving commercials glorify boring everyday tasks.  I filmed this using the camera on my laptop.

Here is the link to the original video...
 http://www.ubu.com/film/wegman_deodorant.html

Video Art Reading
1.  Do you think it's enough to just read about Video Art or is it better to experience it?
2.  What's the difference between video art and just videos?  Do Youtube videos count as art?

Happy Giraffe

Adding audio to my animation made it easier to tell the story I developed in my triptychs.  Explanations are unnecessary when the audio is connecting the dots.

Happiness isn't Happiness Without a Talking Giraffe Animation

I think changing the triptych into a video allowed me to create the scene and set up for the "punch line" more effectively.

Happiness isn't Happiness Without a Talking Giraffe

Triptych

The speech bubbles are the main focus of each of the panels in my triptych.  These words come from the Calvin and Hobbes comic published on April 5th, 1991 (my birthday).  I have always been proud that this philosophical excerpt into Calvin and Hobbes' lives was published on my birthday, and this project gave me the opportunity to express my thoughts.  Calvin believes he has discovered the key to happiness.   He thinks that if he ignores all bad things, his life he will remain forever positive.  Hobbes tries to bring him back to reality by revealing that technique is actually called denial and it's quite irresponsible.  Calvin's decides to follow his new desire to be happy and ignores Hobbes' negative remark.

I sided with Calvin and chose to step into the world of denial and ignore all the negative things there are in the universe.  My triptych reveals the things in life that make me the happiest.  Though the images seem random they are all important and meaningful to me.  There is Maroon 5 cover art, giraffes for my sister, evidence of my Oregon Duck fandom, toast, Winnie the Pooh, Simba, and the main background is a page from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  All these things combine to create three blissful images that I can always look at to forget the bad.