ksmart’s blog

   This is one of my favorite pictures of Chris (I’m in there too).  This was the weekend in the Berkshires when we first said how we felt about each other.  I feel like this picture says it all… the second day we were there it was pretty cloudy, but as soon as we decided to go apple picking in this orchard, the sun came out for a brief second.  all of a sudden, the trees were lit up in this beautiful light, a garden of Eden.  this picture says it all because we’re walking side by side, like we’d done a million times before this picture was taken, but everything is different.  This image represents to me the beginning of everything….

 Submitted by Lauren

barcelona, 2003. my best friend and i, wandering around the city, eating good food, and enjoying long conversations and comfortable silences in equal measure. when i think of barcelona i remember: mild winter weather; gaudi architecture, crazy and beautiful; and donuts.

kat grew up in singapore, a fan of all things american, especially the food. she loved chex mix, oreos, and was heartbroken when dunkin’ donuts pulled its franchise out of singapore somewhere in the mid 90s. you can imagine her reaction when we came across a dunkin’ donuts store just up the road from our hostel in barcelona, and how we frequented it in our week there (at least once a day).

one of my favourite memories of barcelona came at the end of our trip. we sat in our dorm room the night before we were due to fly to london, tipped all our money onto kat’s bunk and counted it up. we put aside the amount we needed for bus fare to the airport, and then with the remaining money, worked out how many dunkin’ donuts we could buy. in my memory it went something like this:

kat: (excited) ok. how many donuts do you want?
me: none. i just want coffee.
kat: (more excited) ok! (counts money) we can get a box!

and then she started working out what flavours she was going to get while i sat there witnessing her glee with amusement and love.

early next morning, we shouldered our backpacks and trudged up la ramblas to dunkin’ donuts. we had, of course, checked the night before to make sure that it would be open. (clearly, in barcelona, donuts are a start-of-the-day priority.) i sat at one of the tables guarding our packs, willing my brain to wake up, while kat queued to the spend the last of our euros on this longed-for confectionery. she returned, my coffee in one hand and a box of a dozen donuts in the other.

i took this photo at the airport while we were waiting for our flight to be called. kat was rationing her donuts; i can’t remember what number this one was. i do remember watching her as she ate them; the furrow of her brow as she contemplated which flavour to sacrifice first; the look of happiness as she savoured each precious mouthful. it was the face of joy that only a favourite food can bring. (i wear it when eating chocolate, often.)
it still tickles me every time i think of that day.

 Submitted by Estee

  This is Jim’s favorite picture of himself — he was 12 or 13 at the time and now he is in his sixties, so it was taken just about the time I was born, in 1952, probably with a Brownie.  His cousin Joan took the picture in Scarsdale where they lived — I think it is early spring.  I think what he likes about it is that it shows his spirit so clearly — he is happy, casual, confident, full of charm and a touch of the devil, as if he knew that he would grow up to be a force to be reckoned with.  I love this picture too, but I can see that he is a neglected child — his parents, though well-off, did not concern themselves about his dress or his teeth, so his clothes are a little shabby and you can see that one tooth is chipped.  To be fair, he must have been a handful.  When he was about seven he took some of his fathers bullets and sat on a big boulder and bashed away at one with a hammer to see what would happen.  The thing discharged and hit him in the leg — he still has the scar.  It’s a good thing he didn’t get a hold of the gun! 

 Submitted by Olivia

     This is my friend Meghan at our annual costume party. She decided to go as a roller girl from the 80s but I think the outfit fits her personality well. She of course is an 80s girl herself but is also a bit loopy, but yet a great friend. And yes she is wearing roller skates in our neighbor’s living room!

Story submitted by Jeff

click to view

So I decided to return to Flash and the Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories. I wanted to spend more time with Flash and I am really drawn to these stories, so I started again on a “The Rainbow Serpent.” (Or maybe I’ve been subconciously preparing for my second trip to Aus coming up!). I thought I wouldn’t have to spend as much time getting to know the environment of Flash and that I could get right to work; however this story ended up requiring more and more scenes and actions then the previous story so I spent even more time on this one. Flash also crashed on me 4 times, and I lost so much work each time.

This time I wrote the story (based on two versions I found online) first and and then had Sam read it which was fine, but then I really had to stick to that exact story in the animation. I used another track from the Aboriginal music which I thinks works really well with this one. I wanted the music to start first and then Sam’s voice to start after the title pages, but the class didn’t really like the stillness when that happened last time, and I didn’t have time to go back to it in the end, so I just started the voice at the same time. I’m sure I’ll fix this later.

click to view

Well, I had never used Flash before so when my family had cleared the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I headed into school just to try to familiarize myself with the program. I thought I would just spend a couple hours. This turned into five and I found the whole thing somewhat difficult, but also loved this new form of storytelling! I spent the next several afternoons/evenings/late-into-the-night, in the lab (right in the middle of the the Applications group editing their hours of footage, and having group meetings). I found it frustrating that certain symbols–like my birds–I couldn’t open up, edit, and then change the name to make it a new symbol.

After doing most of the animation, I went home and re-wrote the story, based on the two versions I found on the internet. I searced on store iTunes for some Aboriginal music and Australian birds—and purchased a few songs. Later, I worked with these in Audacity, cutting some of the Aboriginal music track and then inserting two layers of bird music (also edited) at various points. I imported this in Flash and lay this as a base behind the whole animation.

I also checked out an M-Audio and recorded Sam reading the story. I had no idea he would have such a good storytime voice!! So I imported this track as well, but then found I had to adjust my animation quite a bit to match his voice. There are a few parts where I would have added a bit more animation, but I also kind of like the story just to move with Sam’s voice. 

These are my storyboards based on an Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime Story.

In the week leading up to class, I was sketching out a story about some men and women getting ready for a dance. But I was getting tired of these drawings and the story didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Sam suggested I do an Aboriginal Dreamtime Story, which seemed like a great idea! So I then spent time trying to figure out which one I should do! I thought this one, with the Emu and the Brolga would be interesting to animate and loved the image of the egg cracking over firewood in the sky (????) .

Response to Reading: 

Here’s the sound file that Rodrigo and I put together.  We both collected clips and then came together to start editing. Except I forgot mine! So I started editing Rodrigo’s clips recorded from our ITP buds’ laughter! I found myself more intersted in the actual dialogue that occured while trying to get people to laugh so I worked with that too. I put everything into Audacity and moved clips around and also set a beat downloaded from an internet site. Then I sent all this to Rodrigo so he could add his own edited files to mine. Have a listen…and a laugh!

 http://itp.nyu.edu/~rd989/files/soundLab.mp3

Week 1 (feed me!)

Week2 (click mouse, plenty of food!)

Week 2: dynamic

Week 2: Pairs

Week 3: With Class

Week 3: Buddahs under Spotlight

Week 4: Fishie Sonar (click mouse to activate)

Week 6: Fishie Swims On (to be used with serial)

Midterm: Poems and Images (make sure sound is up)

Response to Reading: Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan

It seems any particular media can only be assessed when scrutinized within the whole scope of the culture from which it is emerging. Take his example of Russia (p.27) and how even types of dances become “acceptable” as the politics and culture change. Further, I found his reference Margaret Mead’s ideas also worth exploring.

It’s intersting to consider hot and cold media; although, I am still curious as to why speech is cold. There seems to be constant interplay between hot and cold media. The example of Calvin Coolidge (p.29) and his aloofness and the newspapers’ subsequent response to his lack of image was a prime example of this constant battle to balance both hot and cold. I feel we always do this, even in the smallest of gestures.

Curious to consider McLuhan’s comment in reference to today’s age: Anybody will concede that society whose economy is dependent upon one or two major staples like cotton, or grain, or lumber, or fish, or cattle is going to have some obvious social patterns of organizaion as a result. (p. 21) Haven’t we acheived some sort of organization with our contstant stream of media?

I want to come back to this later, as I feel I have more to say, but really, one personal response to this text was just to look up everything/everyone McLuhan referenced: this helped give a better picture to the work as a whole.