Conceptual

Introduction

The conceptual project was the first project we did as juniors when we came to Freestyle. The central goal of the unit was to develop our abstract thinking and communication skills to answer the question:

How can I use unconventional forms to express myself?

We were pushed to engage in creative risk-taking through poetry, music, art, animations, experimental film, and web production, challenging students to express their opinions through a distinct personal aesthetic. We also began to learn how to use Adobe tools like Photoshop and Premier as the digital technology mediums.

To see this unit through, each of us picked an adjective and a verb to insert into the sentence frame: “I am exploring the feeling of ____ through the experience of ____.” This sentence which we called a .concept statement was used to serve as a guiding theme for all of our work. My concept statement was:

I am exploring the feeling of wonder through the experience of isolation.

English: Poetry

The first project we did in English – for the Conceptual unit – was poetry. We wrote an ekphrastic, free verse, and spoken word poem. In English honors, we additionally wrote a paper analyzing a specific poet and his/her works and style.

Ekphrastic Poem

We went on a field trip to the San Francisco MoMA and so our first poem was an ekphrastic poem – a poem about a piece of art. I chose Diego Rivera’s The Flower Carrier, which he made in 1935.

Diego Rivera's "The Flower Picker" depicts two hispanic flower-pickers. One is crawling on the ground with a huge basket of picked flowers tied to his back around his shoulders. the other worker is a woman, standing and holding the basket up on his back.

The silent trees that stand tall, strong, and weary.
Our food, our flowers, they pick though it’s dreary.

The silent foundation on which we stand.
A part of society we cannot ban.

The black, the brown, the yellow too.
Come from places with opportunities for few.

Hard they work, both day and night.
Regardless of their racist plight.

The language of love, the color of chocolate.
They are something that we cannot let,
To be buried away without a second thought.
When burden society or worse – they have naught.

Free Verse Poem

Another poem we wrote within the Conceptual unit is the free verse poem.  Free verse poetry is a free-flowing form of poetry defined by individual poet how they choose.  This poem was the only poem that was created in direct relation to our concept statement: the feeling of wonder through the experience of isolation

In the hallway, as light dawns
The life of our house breathes in, it yawns.
The plain blank, the wild silent.
It sits atop its green pensive hill,
Alone. The wind whistles and leaves blow through.
A maple of independence
A pine of opportunity, with veins of confusion

Silence.

The silence.

The silence.

The leaves whirl in and out, just out of arm’s reach
Each dancing their own tune down cognition’s street

As day turns to dusk, fireflies out in rarity
Out of the haze comes a cedar of clarity

The silence, the silence – it creeps up so scarily
Yet out of it comes to a new kind of clarity
as the leaves sweep the halls with such great adventure
The cedar sits quietly right in the center
The silence has shown us the way to success
The way to discover what makes us at rest

We close the shutters to our soul as the day fades from face
The house swirling with leaves of the days past and today
We calm the leaves and go down the hill
from the place of mind where our house lives, still

Spoken Word Poem

The last poem we wrote in the conceptual unit was a spoken word poem. Spoken word poetry is – as it sounds – poetry that is meant to be read out loud. This poem is not based on our concept statement. Instead, I wrote a poem about my mother.

“My Helmet”

My shiny helmet the color of spring
My shiny helmet protects me from every which thing.
My shiny helmet loved me so much.
And I loved it.

Then I turned 10. And I felt rebellious.
I thought, “you know, to hell with this”
And my shiny helmet still took care of me.

But it wasn’t enough. None of it was enough.

I grew my own ideas from a flowerpot full of insanity,
Walked around like I owned all but gravity.
The stars the limit, hung from a glass sky by threads of spidery design
The skies my bed, cushioned with cotton candy dreams.
I slept and dreamt a life through a looking glass,
Of candy canes and runaway trains was my life full of adventure and gall.

And then the pot fell off the balcony.
Gravity left for a newer lover.
The stars were clipped from their silvery threads.
The clouds dispersed to sad little shreds.
I slept no longer. I dreamt no farther.
Because the looking glass had become a magnifying glass, burning me with the light of day.
How did I get here? How could I have done this?

I looked everywhere for my shiny helmet. My wonderous helmet. But I had abandoned it long ago.
To a closet where the light shined only when it wanted something in return.
But now, I yearned
For its love and protection.
Hoping for some kind of connection,
To it

But it wasn’t enough.

All the days of traipsing the clouds, of hunting for leprechauns, fairies, through crowds
In my mind
It was all a waste it had been a chase
For something better I would not find

Because all I wanted, was

My shiny helmet the color of spring.
My shiny helmet that made my heart sing
Protected me from every which thing
Had a soul next to mine that would ring
All my fake psychedelic bling
was not worth it. It wasn’t enough.

For I just wanted my shiny helmet.

And my shiny helmet still took care of me.

Little had I known,
my shiny helmet had been the one pruning the weeds growing from my flower pot.
Putting on a show of antigravity so that cares, I had naught.
Hanging stars from the sky for me because I was her sun and moon.
Setting my bed of cotton candy clouds and dreams so I wouldn’t wake up too soon.
Laying the path of candy canes for me so I could find my way, out
Of the fog
I came
And there
She was.
There,
My shiny helmet.
And here I was. Here we were. Together

Honors: Poet Study

Being additionally enrolled in the English honors program, I had to complete a Poet Study project where we selected a specific poet and analyzed a few of their poems and personal poet styles. I chose T.S. Eliot and specialized within T.S. Eliot’s work, on “The Hollow Men.” Below is the analysis that I did on that poem.

      In “The Hollow Men” we see the development of the death life of the narrator – a member of the hollow men [c]- as they explain the loneliness and emptiness, then transition to fear and hopelessness that they feel as they go with their fellow Hollow Men into death’s deep kingdom. The vague narrative i[d]s more of an emotional journey than an actual story, but we can see through this that the narrator is telling the experience of going from dying (death’s other kingdom), waiting to cross the Styx (death’s dream kingdom), and entering death’s kingdom at last (death’s twilight kingdom). The surroundings of Eliot’s life created a darkness in him that can be seen reflected in his writing through the hopelessness that the Hollow Men feel in the land of death as they trudge through a Dante’s Inferno rings of hell. The purpose of the poem is to make the reader feel deep emotion and confusion upon reading the piece and to convey the sentiment of the time and place Eliot was in. The greater meaning of poem is that society has rotten and fallen and that after death we continue a life in “death’s other kingdoms” where the darkness of life is only amplified.[e] This is shown through the journey through death – a reference to Dante’s Inferno – that the Hollow men endure, where everything they experience is “more distant and more solemn Than a fading star.”
Though The Hollow Men is a free verse poem with no steady rhyme scheme, it has occasional rhyming that helps smoothen the cadence of the piece. As it goes along, it has a flow to it right off one’s tongue that makes the confusing and difficult poem easier to read. He uses metaphors and visual imagery to portray visceral images with simple and relatable things, such as “wind in dry grass” to describe the bleakness of prospects for the Hollow Men, or “tree swinging” to portray the fall parts of society that inhabit death’s “dream” kingdom. The tone of the piece is dark, sad, and cynical, and develops throughout the piece with the help of direct tone words such as “hollow,” “death,” “broken,” “distant,” “solemn,” “supplication.” “tumid,” “spasm,” and many others.[f] These words intensify the dark[g] message of the poem and demonstrate the juxtaposition of simple and elevated diction used throughout the piece to help the reader understand the meaning, and the significance at the same time. The sections of simple diction help the reader relate to the reading and understand it on a basic level, and then the elevated diction inspires awe and complexity of the mysterious mask of the poem. The stanzas in “The Hollow Men” are mostly structured in such a way that they begin with lines of simple diction and then end with lines of elevated diction – serving to help the reader along in the reading while pushing them out and making them think deeply about it at the same time. All of these elements combined painted a dark image of something involving death that the reader has to piece together to understand. The real elements that help us understand the journey element of the piece and Eliot’s disappointment of society are the references to society through symbols and descriptions of movement and change in location. An example of disappointment in society can be seen through the phrase “broken column.” The column implies architecture with detailed supports, as can be seen in high and civilized societies such as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and their legacies in buildings with ornate columns, of present day. T[h]he broken element of the phrase is telling us that Eliot views those high and civilized societies to have fallen – that he is disappointed with them or that they have ceased to serve their purpose as a broken column has. The phrases “valley of dying stars” to “this beach of the tumid river” and the transitions from “death’s other kingdom” to “death’s dream kingdom” to “death’s twilight kingdom” show us how the characters – The Hollow Men – and the narrator are moving through this story about death, that there are different levels or parts to where they are. This builds the tone, as well as the meaning of the piece, which is very important in detecting the purpose of the writing. Because his work is charged with such strong emotional and specifically negative words, we see that Eliot is trying to convey a sentiment though his piece – the sentiment that he is feeling towards society and the world around him.

Design: Photography

Since it was the first Design project of our Freestyle “careers,” the conceptual unit Design project was a photography project. This would serve as an easy introduction to the principles of design, as most kids knew how to use cameras and Ms. P could teach us relatively easily how to operate a DSLR camera at a basic level of proficiency. We did two photography projects, one based on our concept statement and one based on the theme “Transport.”

Conceptual

The conceptual photo was entirely based on our concept statement – the connection which was explained in the artist statement (included below).

A pile of blue playing cards lies on a table. There are a few face cards visible but the central focus is a red queen card.

Artist StatementI am exploring the feeling of belonging through the experience of isolation.

My photo consists of a loosely-arranged pile of playing cards, all of which are blue except for a lone red face card on top. Also, a grouping of them on the surface – including the single red one – are face cards. Another important compositional element in my photo is the background, which there isn’t much of. I purposefully filled up the entire photo frame with the cards so that the focus would be solely on them, so the viewer would feel as engulfed in the feeling of the piece as the red card. Furthermore, I controlled the lighting of the photo to add to the effectiveness of its visuals: shooting outside in the late afternoon to obtain maximum natural lighting and making a blue tinge through a tungsten light filter. I manipulated the light as such so that my photo would be dark emotionally and figuratively but not literally. I decided to angle the camera in such a way as to create an extended depth of perception to convey isolation more effectively through the appearance of a more vast card pile.

The central red face card is isolated from the other cards because it is the only one of a different color – and a strikingly different color too – yet it is belonging at the same time because it is still a card just like the rest of them. Face cards are royalty – king, queen, etc. – and belonging plays a big role in royalty because it is a wealthy and coveted position that one attains by being born into a royal family. This way, the central card that is different still belongs with them because it is also royalty, yet this arrangement and the role of face cards also demonstrate isolation because all the face cards are facing away from the central card. Both the difference in color and connotations that come with royalty and its social structure help to create the feeling of belonging through the isolation that I am trying to convey.

Through the editing process in Adobe Photoshop, I manipulated color balance in order to achieve the final feeling that I was looking for to represent my concept statement. I did all the basic exposure and framing correction in camera raw and added vignetting later in addition to other things, but the central focus of my editing was to make the red color of the isolated card stand out in contrast to the ocean of blue. The way I did this was incredibly time-consuming and meticulous, but very much worth the effort. I zoomed in a lot to the image and selected by hand all the areas of lacy red fringe on the card with the quick selection tool, saved the selection, then increased the saturation of the red in that carefully selected area. This created the final effect of highly contrasted red against the rest of the blueish image, helping me emphasize my concept of belonging through isolation. This process really taught me that there is nothing that can’t be done through editing and that the particular way one edits a photo – even minor edits – can make a huge difference in the eyes of the viewer.

Transport

The assignment for this project was to go outside and take 100 photos of non-motorized transportation objects with wheels. We were required to look for and at these objects through the eyes of an artist – searching for something interesting that would make the viewer think.

The image depicts a close-up shot of the wheel of a trolley from beneath.
The object in my photo is a dolly – a vertical cart of sorts used to transport boxes and other heavy objects. The reason I chose this object is because it fits the assignment requirement for this project in a unique way – I had a feeling not many other kids would have a dolly, let alone use it for their project. I also wanted to use this object specifically because it had a beautiful red color that I thought would stand out nicely in a photograph with a properly accompanying background. The dolly is “sitting” on a chair in my backyard, in front of my fruit trees because I thought that the background of brown chair and green trees would make the red of the dolly stand out more and define itself strongly. I chose to put the dolly in a chair specifically, because that’s not a place where you would often find a dolly and when I placed it there, it almost looked like a person sitting in a chair and thought that this layer of personification added an interesting deeper touch to the photo. The other aspects of the photo – lighting and angle – were chosen based on a photographic gut feeling working together with knowledge of the principles of depth of field, fluidity of movement, proportion, and emphasis. I took the photo from below and made the perspective deeper so that the length of the dolly could be caught and draw the attention of the viewer from one end of the photo up to the other, and back down again. For proportion, when I took the photo from below and deepened the field of perspective, I placed the tire wheel of the dolly at the front and of a greater size proportionally to the rest of the photo so that it would be emphasized – since it was the central element of the assignment.
3. Beginning the editing process in Adobe Photoshop, I knew that I needed to do a few things to my image to start with to make it decent: tone down the patches of white sky coming through the leaves, even the black/white balance (it was too black-heavy), and “calm” the light tone by reducing the exposure. I did all these things using the individual sliders as well as the tone curve – also using the tone curve to create a sort of hazy old photo feel. After that, I brought out the red by increasing the saturation of the color red in the photo, and shifting the hue of the red towards orange and red. Some of the skills that I used to edit this final photo were ones that I had learned in class – for example I used my newfound knowledge of the “band-aid” – or spot healing – tool to clean up the wheels which were covered in dirt and paint. Skills like this along with other knowledge of the software and photo editing that I have learned in design so far helped me a lot with molding the photo to fit my vision of it.

 

Film: Experimental

The Film part of the conceptual unit was – like in Design – all about introducing the class and the basic equipment since most of us had no experience with film work. We were supposed to create an experimental film that was based on our concept statement. Experimental films are films that are strange in nature as the word experimental would suggest, so the only guidelines we were given was to learn how to use the camera at a basic enough level to put together an experimental video.

The production of the video was my first introduction to Adobe Premier and so a lot of this project was spent learning the software and seeing what I could do with it to create this. I imported clips, chose ones I wanted, cut them at specific places, edited their color, placed them in the timeline, and added credits among other smaller adjustments.

I am exploring the feeling of wonder through the experience of isolation.

ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode