ASSIGNMENT
For this project we were asked to document in a myriad of mediums our first week of classes, as well as draw the dreams we had during this time. After presenting what we collected during that week, we developed our collection into a final piece. I choose to explore the malleability of dreams in relation to distinct moments in time.
PROCESS
I gathered materials throughout the week by making a mental note of “whenever I feel like I should remember a moment I’ll do something to capture it”. With that in mind, every time I felt a moment was important, I either drew it, recorded it, photographed it, or collected an item from it. This lead to a small collection of cards, pictures, and videos. I choose to label them and display them according to dates/times. In addition, I kept a piece of paper next to my bed, so every morning I would wake up and draw what I had dreamed about, and then write the context to the best of my ability.
After reflecting upon the collected items (image above) I noticed how the drawing of dreams connected and to some extent overpowered the photographs/videos of my days. I wanted to cultivate this idea, so I thought about how I could elucidate that our dreams linger like a cloud about the events of the day. So, in my final piece, my goal was to captivate and materialize this idea.
Before brainstorming I knew I wanted to work with video, projection, and photography as these are my favorite mediums. At the same time I wanted to incorporate my dream drawings. I thought about what I could do to marry both of these ideas. My first instinct was to go with animation. Since all my drawings consisted of the most memorable image of my dreams, I decided that I would simply animate a little movement to each character I had drawn. I decided that the easiest way to do this (since I’m not familiar with Adobe software) was to use tracing paper and scan the drawings, later on editing them on Lightroom and Photoshop (2nd and 3rd images). Bellow are images of the tracing paper drawings.
After uploading the images to the computer and adjusting the lines, I used Final Cut Pro to animate (last image above). I choose to neglect the order of the dreams as a way to demonstrate the fluidity of both memory and dreaming, how we can jump from one thought to another without much structure or sense of time. In addition, I also choose to add a water-like effect for further movement and to portray malleability. I also picked out and edited my favorite photos. I choose pictures from different days that I felt were the most beautiful, both emotionally and compositionally. I printed them in an A4 size as I thought they should’t overpower the animations. I hung up the images almost in a grid. I didn’t want to have a perfect display of six as it would feel way too structured to represent memories. Although I don’t have an image/video of the projection itself, bellow is an image of how the final piece looked like.
CRITIQUE
Durning the critique I received lots of advice and well as interesting ideas to think of. Lots of people enjoyed how I combined my love of photography and videography with the challenge of drawing, integrating two uncommon mediums. People also thought the photographs I choose had an interesting view of the ordinary, which made me very exited to further explore that idea. However, the idea to make the photographs bigger was almost unanimous, the animations were too overpowering. I agree with this, I did not anticipate the display to be so big and the images so small. Next time I’ll have to name note of the side of the screen. Overall, I’m very satisfied with my work; it feels like a finished piece.
