So my digital media course has officially wrapped up. The last project we had to do was a light box. It was probably one of the more complex projects we had to do in the course.

I ended up taking two photos for the light box that were combined into one for the final project. On the left side is a man sitting alone in a building. On the right is a field of grass, with a duck standing near the bottom of the photo.

I 'll admit I kind of stumbled upon the idea of the photo by accident. I had taken these images separately, hoping that one of them would ignite some kind of inspiration for the project. I initially wasn't really sure about how I would use either one of them. Then I had a talk with my professor who gave me a few ideas.
I decided to put the two together. I felt that there was an interesting contrast in the two photos unified by a single element. The contrast related to the location; the manmade confines of a building to the openness of the natural, grassy field. The single, unifying element was the sense of isolation; both photos have two figures separate and alone, the duck and the human. Yet their surrounding environment seem to give off a different impression of each one. To me the photo of the man gives off a better sense of isolation because the environment around him seems more claustrophobic and in a way foreboding. He seems almost trapped, whether the duck stands in a open, sunny field. The duck appears to be more free.
I feel that this photo is a comment of the downsides of an advanced civilization; that we start to lose touch with the natural world.

The following photos were done for Project 3- digitally record (or create) a study on light and movement.

I wanted to explore the way both artificial and natural light can change the appearance of the surrounding environment. Lighting can make someplace seem either sinister or comforting. I choose this particular location because it was the best area to explore this concept. The overall atmosphere of this area tends to change during different time periods. In general, the lights alongside the walls tend to make the area more foreboding during the night, whether it looks more pleasant during the day. Some photos have their own unique look. The 5th photo listed suggests it was taken during a particularly hot day, whether the 3rd photo has a sort of 'light at the end of the tunnel' imagery.
It is very important to note that each image was edited in Photoshop. Using the program I exaggerated the lighting in each photograph, emphasizing the contrast between the light and the darkness. Photoshop certainly has gained a reputation for artificially enhancing images to make them reach a certain ideal. Here the photographs have been manipulated to appear more visually interesting.
Looking at them now, I've noticed that while this manipulation is very evident in some of the photos, a few look almost untouched at first glance (particularly images 4 and 6).

So I have taken the first few photos for the light study project.

Right now I'm trying to decide what to do with them. I didn't want to do another video again so I asked my professor, Lois, for advice. She suggest that I print the images and put up a large mosaic. To do this I will need to take more pictures of the site with a better camera. Lois mention a company called "Images in Colour"that will print my images for a substantial fee. 

I'm thinking of first modifying the images in Photoshop, maybe play around with the lighting effects. The goal would be to show the way lighting can change the atmosphere of a certain location, as well as to explore the different effects of natural and artificial light. 

I've been looking over the outline for the third project in my hybrid media course. We have four options. We can either;

1. Create a digital recording that focuses on a study of light.
2. Do a digital project about one of the senses.
3. Do something that comments on the interconnectedness of sound and space.
4. Focus on how human beings organize information about the world around them.

Personally I find the first one to be the most intriguing. These last few days I have been brainstorming ideas for the project, trying to think of what kind of light sources to use and where to display them. I think doing an exterior area would be interesting, something with a lot of artificial lights like street lamps and the like. Perhaps I could do something that contrasts a manmade building with a more natural surrounding.

So I've just completed my hybrid media assignment. I call it Viewing the Outsider. It is based on the short story The Outsider, which was written by H.P. Lovecraft. That wasn't something I intended at the start of this assignment.

My initial idea was that I would have single unifying theme within the video, one that each type of media that I used would embody. The theme which I had settled on was 'fear of the unknown'. It was then a matter of determining how I could convey this theme. Now it just so happens that have a paperback collection of H.P. Lovecraft's various short stories. Given that the author is one of the 20th century's most influential horror writer, I figured that I could find a few quotes from one of his stories that would match the theme of my video. Lovecraft's stories often dealt with supernatural creatures, often emphasizing their alien nature and mankind's inability to comprehend them.

I started looking for quotes and ended up rereading the entire story. The tale is told in first-person, and the narrator is someone who has lived his entire life in a dark fortress beneath the ground. His knowledge of the outside world comes from books that he has read. Tried of living in darkness, the narrator departs from his home and stumbles upon a castle. Inside the castle are a variety of individuals having a party. Finding this discovery to be exhilarating our narrator steps into the castle, only to see the party members scream and panic as they begin to flee for their lives. He then sense a presence and turns to see a monster staring right at him. The narrator stumbles and reaches his hand out to the monster, only to have his hand touch a "cold and unyielding surface of polished glass".

I've always liked this story, mostly because I felt that the use of the first-person narrative was very creative. But I was also attracted to the themes of isolation within the story and the more I thought about it, the prospect of using the story as the basis for my video become more appealing.
The idea is quite similar to using film clips in a hybrid media, only I would represent the story through text and mix it with my own footage.

Keeping in mind that the story was written in first-person narrative, the footage in my hybrid media is essentially a series of P.O.V. shots. These shots are very grainy and lighting in each of them has been digitally altered. Again, this was done to reflect on another aspect of the story; that the narrator wasn't  human. The idea is to suggest to the viewer that we are seeing the world through the eyes of something inhuman. I tried to contrast this by inserting unaltered photographs of the landscape between each clip, showing the difference between how the viewer would see the world, and how the creature sees the world. Also, in the story the creature remarks how he cannot seem to remember his past; the photographs are supposed to represent what he can remember. They are fading images within his memory.
Of course I also wanted to convey the sense of isolation that the creature felt, so I chose to record the footage in an more isolated area. The nearby buildings represent human civilization, something that this creature longs to be apart of.

The first quote in the video is the first sentence in the story. The second one that is split up over the course of the video is the last sentence of the first paragraph. The last quote comes from part of the first sentence of the very last paragraph in the story. To me, these quotes embodied the themes of the story and the ideal ones to use for the hybrid media. The last shot in the video is meant to sync up with the preceding quote ("...when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other.") in a thematic sense; in this shot the 'reaching beyond' comes in when the creature walks to the end off the path and stops. The video ends here, with him wondering about his next course of action. Is he willing to step off that path and go beyond it?

One thing that is notice able is the lack of sound. I didn't try and record any kind of music or nosies because I felt the silence was more foreboding. I felt that it would give the video a more atmospheric quality that would enhance the sense of isolation and otherworldliness of the P.O.V. shots.

For the next project in my digital media course, I have to create a hybrid media video. Hybrid involves combining multiple forms off media (which encompasses everything from film clips, published text, photographs, etc) into one single clip. For part of the assignment, we have to define a couple of terms that will help us better understand what we have to accomplish with this assignment.

• Haptic Visuality- The term was defined by Laura Marks, who was referring to works by Pipilotti Rist; "..the eyes themselves function like organs of touch". It is when a viewer is trying to discern a tactile texture created by a combination of blured, grainy , low-resolution images. Basically the image deines the viewer a single form to focus on. Instead the viewer has to work to constitute the image, which creates a more multi-sensory experience.
• Variable Media- In this context the term 'variable' refers to all possible forms (whether they be visual, temporal, spatial, interactive, etc.) within design and animation software, which can be modified at any point. Media artists can assign the variable to their own channel on the video's timeline and use that as a jumping point to start animating various dimensions within the scene itself. 

Trying to create this hybrid media project hasn't been easy. I guess that when you have such a board selection of media to work with, you find yourself a bit overwhelmed with all the options available. You need to be able to combine different forms of media and end up with a work of art that conveys a certain idea. 

To me these terms highlight the abstract nature of hybrid media video. Frankly if I had to sum up the examples I have seen in one word I would've said "Abstract". These kinds of works involve some kind of digital manipulation, whether it means playing with an image in photoshop or modifying a film clip. The originals are distorted into something else entirely. 

These are some shots I took for the interior drawing assignment.

The last three were my attempts at experimenting with different light sources. They didn't turn out so well.