Semester take away

    Well, the semester is just about over. The final class for seeing sideways is finished and I'm going to miss it. The best I can do at this point is to remember the lessons I received from the class and the assignments within, and use them as I continue on with my creative processes in life. For my last post pertaining to this class, I'll be discussing three points from this course that I'll be able to use while going forward in my creative career. I'll list them in ascending order of importance to me.

    First is "Polly Wolly doodle all the day?". I had never doodled before until this assignment. Whenever I would draw something, I would always have a clear idea in mind; so having an assignment where I'm not really supposed to think about what I'm drawing was a new concept to me. I found it to be a positive experience; actually coming a bit out of my shell for an assignment was a good experience. I might start trying to think outside my normal boundaries for when I get into a more professional setting while creating. It was one thing to think outside the box while doodling, but looking back on it was pretty nice too, I still don't think I'm much of a doodler, but I might try it again some time.

    Next is "Who am I and why am I here?". To this day, I have still not figured out the question for Who am I, but I'm keeping this assignment in mind so that I don't forget to keep trying to figure it out. This assignment affected me positively, and is one of the few assignments I've received in all of my school years that I actually appreciated doing. I don't have much additional to say about this that has not already been said in the actual blog post, but I'll keep searching for who I am as I continue through life. I hope that I can use the experiences while learning more about myself in my creative processes as well.

    Last and probably the most important was from "Fear". It can be very beneficial to talk about one's fears with another person. Through all the fears that I discussed in class, I'm not sure if I mentioned in the blog on how I can use those fears to my advantage rather than just as a detriment. If anything, I think I can use my fears as a constant reminder of what can happen if I don't try my best in everything I do. If I think of it this way, I'll those possibilities as a reason to never give up my goals. I can't be afraid of trying something for fear of failing, because I'll automatically fail if I never try in the first place. That's probably what stuck out to me for that assignment the most, just the idea of being able to use something as powerful as my own fears to actually aid me instead of harm me. With summer and a new semester around the corner, I have plenty of time to see if a new method using my fears to my benefit will work, and I really hope it does.

    I'm definitely looking forward to the semester being over, but I'll definitely miss the classes I'm taking for this semester. I hope that the rest of my college time goes nicely.

Class take away 16

    Today we discussed our "Altared" Book. Since Beth was still down in New Mexico, we decided to record all the presentations to send to her so she could grade them. I'm not used to getting recorded while presenting things, but I think it went pretty well.

    We had some students create things out of their books, using their books, and inspired things from their books. I altered the book to match a couple traits about myself, including my protective side; I sealed the pages of the book together to keep the outside world safe from reading it. Overall, I just want to turn it into something that I would actually like when looking at it, instead of the original book that made me hate it. At the end of it, I actually find some enjoyment in this new book I've altered, so I consider that a success.

    There were a lot of other students presenting too, but I'll admit that I did not pay attention as well as I wish I had. I was up until 5:30 in the morning working on three finals for that day, then woke up really early as well, so I was pretty tired.

    Near the end of class, we took some picture of the whole class with a cake that Jake brought in. I may have mis-heard it from the class before, but I thought we were going to be doing something with sending candy to Beth with another cake, but I don't remember if we actually did that or not, but I did bring Smarties for it.

    It was nice fun class to end the semester on.

Class take away 14

    I have purposely decided not to write this post for the assigned time because of what I have to say. I did write it down on my laptop immediately after class, but did not want to put it online. I know that this means that I will take a deduction in points, but I would rather take that than to have this message be read too early. I did not like the class we had last week. It will be uploaded just minutes before the final class ends.

When creating something, always keep the word “Predictable” in mind. Avoid cliche things, create my own formula of doing something that other people have not done before. Cliche photos are out of control.

One student devoted an entire week to changing what he normally does to address his fears

At the end, Jake talked about something that was really tough for him to do just this morning, which took a lot of courage to do.

He also showed us pictures of his work, he’s a sculptor and he seems to do it pretty well, creating life sized pieces.

We were then show a video of a man who creates art only through ten keys on an old fashioned typewriter. He has a disability that doesn’t allow him to make art with pencils or brushes, but he still found a way. What we learned from this is that we should not say “I could never do that.” because that asks the question, “What can I do?”. It's one thing to see a good artist, but to have them say things like that is just really nice to see these days.

Jake talked about one student and how his fear assignment was of outstanding quality, above everyone else’s. He talked about this quite frequently after his presentation was complete, and gave me an impression that he didn’t think that anyone else really tried compared to him or didn’t sacrifice as much as he did, I think he actually said something along those lines as well. I did not particularly enjoy how much he went on and on about it, I took a risk of being arrested for the way I dressed to push my fear assignment beyond being just an assignment, and to use it to learn just how powerful fears are in my life. I showed a lot of my true feelings and emotions, and even talked in my normal voice which never sees the public. Not only did I have to force myself out my apartment door for fear of revealing the design of a character I’ve worked on for almost 10 years in secrecy, but then I had to take that design into the school of Media Arts & Science, where I knew that everyone there could be a potential storyteller who might get inspired to make an evil villain out of a design I made to be that of an unusual hero. While in class, someone took a picture of me in my costume If my design turns into a villain before I make it as the hero I've dreamed about, I'm going to be lost. After all he had said about just one person’s assignment and how he didn’t think anyone else sacrificed nearly as much, I felt as though I had completely failed in my assignment, which happens to be one of my greatest fears. I know that the student did indeed make tough sacrifices to do his project, and I give him enormous props for it. His project was very well thought out and covered many important topics. I would have been fine with Jake saying that his project was very well thought out and there must have been a lot of sacrifice. Was his project the best? I don't think so. Was mine the best? I have no idea, probably not. But to give off an impression that nobody else sacrificed or risked anywhere near the amount that he did was a bit unfair to everyone who did make a huge sacrifice or take a big risk in making the project. Talking about personal information, revealing bold or even weird fears, and even taking risks with the simpleness of how they showed up to class; I may not have made a big sacrifice for the fear assignment, but nobody knows how much I feel like I risked to just walk in the door and take off my mask. I took a big risk with a bit of sacrifice today, to potentially sacrifice almost everything I've worked for in the past 10 years in exchange for a grade and getting myself outside of the walls I put up for myself. If somewhere down the line it turns out that my big risk turned into a major sacrifice, I'll look back on that time and say that it's my worst and biggest regret, and I'll probably think of it that way for the rest of my life. 

I just said a whole lot about something that everyone else in the class might not have thought of as a big deal, but it was to me. Normally I don’t like to talk about the small things that people say (not necessarily to me) that might discourage me, but this was so stupid that I felt like I needed to say something about it. I'm not a teacher, I have no experience being a teacher, and I doubt that I will ever teach professionally; but I wouldn't ever make such a point out of one students work to say that nobody else risked or sacrificed as much as previously said student, that's assuming way too much and is playing the favorites game. I honestly feel like I'm taking this out of proportion, but despite the fact that I normally stay very reserved, don't like to talk about things that bug me, and don't really like to give criticism, this was too much for me to keep inside.

Overall, I did not like this class, I almost want to say that I hated it, but that's too strong. Despite everything I risked to make it, I feel as though I failed my Fear assignment.

This is it. The "Altared" Book of the Self

    Well, it’s finally time; time to submit my Altared Book of the Self. It’s been quite a journey this semester and is probably the toughest semester I’ve had in all my years of school, before and during college. For a bit of recap as to what the Altared book assignment is, We are all to take a book that we do not like (putting it very nicely) and “altar” it to make it into something that we do like. We are allowed to alter it in any way that has some kind of positive expression of ourselves. The alteration should also answer the question “What is identity of self in the digital world?” As inspiration with ideas to use while creating it, we can use the experiences we got from all our previous assignments for things to add in our alterations. We also had an assignment earlier to have the cover of the book complete, which did help with time management.

    One quick note to add, I absolutely hate the book I chose. I have not said the name of it yet, but all will be revealed in time, no spoilers.

     Let’s begin with the inspirations I got from my past assignments in chronological order: starting with The Egg and Eye. I decided that I wanted to protect others from reading the book, something that was not done for me back in high school, so I sealed it shut. This also ties in with The flavor of a sand pear sounds like… in which the fruit is basically a outpouring of resistance that does not want to be eaten. The flesh and juice of the pear is blood red, so I combined these two assignments into one example for the book. I dyed some glue to look as blood red as possible and sealed the pages of the book shut. What I did for the egg was that I protected it in a box with cushions inside it. Combining these two, I am protecting the outside world from it, using a deterring barrier to keep it sealed.

In Polly Wolly doodle all the day? I didn’t necessarily create a specific example for it in the book, but I used the example to think about what the book might say about me at first glance. It has a lot of blue color on it, but has been sealed with red glue. To be honest, I’m still not sure what it will say about me, but I’m not too concerned with what people think about me based on an altered book. Don’t get me wrong, I have turned the book into something that I like now, but I prefer to let my words say what needs to be said about me rather than a book I didn’t write, even though I did alter it.

    For Rules were made… I think that coloring the glue red might be something similar to a rule being broken. If that doesn’t cut it, all the trouble and mistakes that I had while trying to glue it shut should be enough. Anything with wet dye typically becomes a big mess, so parts of my covers look like they have red finger prints. I broke my own rules for this one; I didn’t want any red to be on the covers.

For Bible dipping, we were given the word “reused”, and that’s how the cover of my book got created. I reused the cover of the book to turn it into something that I could like about it. Because when the book has its own natural cover, it’s the cover to a book that I despise. But after randomly using the word “reused” it is something that I like.

    For “Who am I and why am I here”, I used it as inspiration while making this book. It was one of the few assignments over my entire time of school that I really enjoyed, and I wanted to make something for this assignment that I could enjoy just as much. As of right now, I did kind of enjoy creating this altered book, but I enjoy the fact that I turned something that I despise into something that I actually like.

    For “You’ve got this covered!”, that happened to be the actual assignment for making the cover of the book. Since that was already done, I altered the spine of the book a bit more to resemble the cover.

   For “Media round robin”, this assignment helped to work on two classes at the same time. The actual process wouldn’t help me much with the altered book, but I did think of a way that the altered book can apply to two problems at the same time. For one, it can provide a way turn something I don’t like into something that I can enjoy at least a little bit. Two, it settles the need for the assignment. Three, I just thought it was a bit fun.

 
    For “Bliss”, the altered assignment itself is to make something bad become something good. This ties in well with the bliss assignment, as it turned something that I would never ever find blissful, into something that I could actually look back on and think of in a good way.

 
    “Fear Factor”. I don’t know what people will think of me when they see this book. I’m worried about failing this assignment. I’m worried about what I might discover about myself some time down the road after looking back on this book. I’m also worried if there was some way that this assignment might affect me negatively now, for the future. These might be strange things to fear, but I always consider my fears and the risks when I do anything.

    And now we are back to the “Altared” Book of the Self. I’ll answer the question “What is identity of self in the digital world?” I drew a small picture on a note card, and put it on the inside back cover of my book. The picture is of a person, but there are no facial features, no clothes, it’s completely filled with black. The way I see it, self in the digital world does not really have a complete appearance. In a digital world, our physical appearances do not usually become apparent, unless by an actual picture of ones self. It would seem as though we create our own self in the real world and in the digital world, but both are at least slightly different. We can decide on an identity for ourselves in the digital world, but not even that decision needs to be permanent. It’s easy to get or create a new image for ourselves in a digital sense, but much harder in the real world sense. Given the fact that it’s easy, it means that we have more of a freedom to change it whenever we desire. If we can change it whenever we desire, then what is an actual good representation of the identity of self in the digital world? To me, it’s a blank slate, a basis that can be formed whenever and however. It may be simple, but that’s what the identity of self in the digital world is to me.

    By the way, the book is Peace like a River, by Leif Enger. It hurt me to say the name of that book and the author just now. If you asked me why I hate it, I honestly could not give you the answer. I just remember that I hated the book so much, that I purged all my memories of it soon after reading it. It was a required book for a high school english class, and I passed the class but probably failed the assignments based on this book. The description of the book talks about it being a spiritual journey, which kind of surprises me on how I must of thought it was bad back then, considering that I am and was religious at the time while reading this book. Either way, the fact remains the same, I personally think that I would have spent too much on that book if I had paid for it with my own crap. I know, toilet humor can be gross, but I need a laugh of any kind with finals week starting.

    I don’t think I’ll ever have a class like this again, which makes these last few lines bittersweet. On the bright side, I can take everything I’ve learned in this class and apply it to all aspects of my life, and make my own experiences with the new perspective. I really wish Beth Lykins could have been around for the Fear assignment as well as the last class, but life happens, we all have experience with that. I might keep posting to this blog, but I’m not completely sure. So until next time, always try to look at things from a different perspective, what lies behind the first appearance might be surprising.