Here’s to a comprehensive collection of my work done in Time with Matt Whitman, and to myself, as a growing photo/videographer. This class has been truly a joy, and an amazing learning experience.
Project 1 – Perceiving/Mapping Time
For my first project, I decided to show how I perceive time by showing the light that is illuminated from my bedroom window that goes across the room as the day goes by. The colors have a mix of representation, first, it expresses the temperature felt across the room, also the temperature as the day goes on. Moving from left to right, the floor is always cold in the morning, the bed feels nice, cozy, and just right, and the walls tend to take in most of the heat and are warm and sometimes even hot to the touch. Also moving from left to right, although this doesn’t match scientifically to how the sun moves, in the morning, it tends to be cooler, it grows to a nice warm and ends up usually being hot until it cools down again for the nighttime. This was made at the beginning of the semester when the temperatures made New York smell a little (sometimes a lot) like boiling garbage).
This project manifested itself in my new home, probably because it was a completely new place I was living in for my first time alone! I spent lots of time in my new room unpacking, doing homework, and planning for the semester ahead – clearly, the time spent in here affected my psyche enough to become my first project in Time.
Project 2 – Iterations of Witnessing
Matsukado_Project2 (1)-1u54bb0
The second project is where I began to dive back into one of my passions, photography. It got off to a bit of a rocky start, especially because I wanted to work with film, however, I was turned down by the photography department, since first years can’t use the darkroom until the second semester. From there, I chose to work digitally, and alter the photos so that they were black and white, as I had first intended. Here I learned how to work with InDesign and I made my first mini zine. It was such a cool experience to begin learning new things again, rather than working on things that I had already learned.
This project meant a lot to me, especially because it was my first chance at beginning to explore New York City. I went to a little photo store to buy my film (that I didn’t end up using) and I got to walk around the city and watch people come and go, see the rain fall and sun shine. It was an eye-opening moment that helped me become more comfortable with this new space I am living in.
Project 3 – Traces and Memories
https://youtu.be/GHMjnb5oe70
As the semester went on, I realized how closely intertwined this class was with my Studio’s inflection: memory. This project only proved itself more, because we began to talk about all of the ways memories and traces were in this project. This was my first experience with Premiere, and honestly, it was a little terrifying. I have only worked on video in iMovie before, and this has a lot more dings and whistles that I wasn’t used to. I’m definitely not a videographer, by any means, and this slight ease into the medium was helpful. I harnessed the helpfulness of my friends as voice/regular actors and put a little experience into this video. I explored morning routine mixed with the feeling of waking up in the morning. It was supposed to be a little confusing and a little fun, showing my morning routine as well as what I had been going through at the time, which was waking up later and later and trying to go to class at the latest minute possible… especially in the mornings.
Project 4 – Journey, Space, and Duration
https://youtu.be/ulBx4WOI4Eo
I see this project as my budding flower. Although it didn’t turn out the way that I wanted to and was a bit more of a ‘fail’ it was a much bigger success in the learning aspect. It truly helped me move forward to have great success in my final, as well as experience a bit of ‘failure’ which isn’t at all a bad thing! I had fun filming, trying out new ideas, and working with video for the absolute first time in Premiere. I had never actually edited footage or done anything of the sort before, which was a major milestone for me, even though the video did a sort of flop. I was very proud, and it was very helpful, so could you really call that a failure?
Final – Multiple Elements/Multiple Timelines
These videos were by far my favorite, and as well what I think, my most successful. I got to elaborate on my second project, which at its heart, was exploring New York. As this was my final, and at the end of the semester, I had become much more well acquainted with the city, as well as loving parts of it, and loving (but a little bit less) other parts of it. This became a ‘triptych’ of sorts, as it was three videos projected on the walls, all adjacent to each other. To view the whole piece, one would use headphones to listen to the ‘sounds of the space’, this created an intimate feeling, which I think was successful. Outside of the speakers, the audio from all three of the videos were mashed together to create a cacophony of sound, the ‘sound of New York City’ one could say. This really allowed me to explore these specific parts of Manhattan and allowed me to show the love and appreciation I had for each.
