Objective:
For this project, we were asked to “take a randomized walk through the city (for example at every traffic light make a right, then walk straight, at second light make a left, repeat (this is called algorithmic walking). This should not be your usual walk, and you should go to at least one neighborhood that you have not visited before. Bring along a camera and take pictures of type on the street: words. Good fun words.”
Looking for Type:
A few friends and I decided to take this opportunity to visit Astoria, Queens as we had already wanted to explore more of New York and specifically the places that represented our cultures (Middle Eastern/Arab and Latino).
Most of the type that we found were on signs as they proved to have the most interesting typefaces. Below are two examples of what we found.
After gathering our type we needed to crop them in order to get the single words that resided in them. In doing so، we could better manipulate the type to assemble our poems. Here are the 100+ words that I collected.
Assembling of Poems:
After cropping and compiling the words I had to begin and assemble the pomes. At first, it was very difficult to come up with a logical and coherent poem as I found that my options were very limited. It pushed me to think outside of the box and think of different ways I could craft a poem. Playing with structure, repetition, and meaning allowed me the freedom to develop poems that related to my identity and self. The poem I ultimately chose was Poem #1 as it was the most representative of who I was as an artist. It tackled the theme of one’s right to exist as they choose, which is a theme I consistently work with.
Poem #1
Poem #2
Poem #3
Video Work:
As we got into the video work I found that I was competent in the use of cutting on the motion, which I decided that I wanted to use in the final video. Below is a gif of the first attempt I made at the video. Although it did not pertain to the poem, I found this little self-exercise to be useful in understanding how to use premiere and cutting on the motion.
Please double click the image to view the gif.
Final Video:
Reflection:
Overall, I am very happy with the end result as I have been wanting to work with this medium for a long time and this finally gave me the opportunity to do so.
Furthermore, I went about entering this media in a way that I wouldn’t normally. One of the first things our professor told us was that she wanted us to push outside of our boundaries so that we could learn things beyond what we normally do. I agreed with her, however, as soon as I started working I realized that working with type in this way was something I did not understand. It took some research and some reflection before I understood how to achieve what I wanted. I looked into lyrics videos as well as previous students work. This resulted in a wellformed video that highlighted the text as the main subject.
In addition, I really enjoyed working with music and archival footage as well as matching the text to it. Not only did this touch my deep love and respect for music and history but it gave me the opportunity to meld the three together. This is something I hope to continue doing in the future. One example of a video that gave me inspiration was Yasmine Hamdan’s In Kan Fouadi Music Video that uses clips from an old film as a background to her song. I adapted this method to match the lines of poetry in my video.
