Final Project

After torturing myself for 2 days, I've finally made up my mind to make a website featuring on war.
I think it should be categorized as "Politics" or "Society". As we all know, war is probably the most terrible thing that mankind invented. Ever since there is human, wars have never stopped. Millions of people were killed; billions were wounded; trillions were homeless, and they still cannot learn the simple fact: wars don't solve problems, they only create hatred. My website will focus on how destructive wars can be, how cruel wars can be, how wars can tear countries down and break families apart. I wish my website can arouse people's anger towards war, people's compassion to countries in a war, and people's fear of war.
Technically, my website will include pictures (of warfare), (sad) songs, and maybe flashes. Something I am thinking about now is to put a map of the world on a webpage and put big warfares of different times on different places of the map. I might add flash to it showing statistics like how many people died in the war and etc.
But what I described above are just notions for now, they are subject to changes. I will definitely add new stuff, and may delete things that I cannot realize too.

Reflection on earlier works

The first project I did in this class was the Immersive Environment. For the project, I made three pictures with Photoshop and Google Sketch-up which reflected the immersive environment of the road. Since I was a small kid, I was always fascinated how immersive road was and I often lost myself in all the imaginations just by looking out of the window of a car. What I am proud of the most for this project is the idea that road is immersive. But maybe just because that this idea is too strange and others didn't think of the road that way, it might seem a little bit confusing to some. Technically, I learned a lot about Photoshop and Google Sketch-up and implemented many in my project.

The second project I did was the Sound Art project in which I used Garage Band. In this project, I used some Garage Band loops, but mainly sound I recorded myself which included voice, guitar, piano and some other sounds, to compact the whole life of a person into a less than 1 minute sound piece. The idea is to tell people that life is short, please don't waste your time. Comparing to others', what I am not satisfied with my project is that because I recorded most of my sounds, sometimes there is noise in the background. After finishing this project, sound art is no more mysterious to me. It just consists of sounds which were put in different tracks.

The third project was animation using Flash. By far, this project has been the one that took me the most time, yet the one I found most fulfilling. I was amazed and shocked on my first glance at stick fights, and decided that I would definitely make something like that later in my life. After learning Flash in class, I've got the tools to realize my dream since I was a small kid. But later I found out that to do that I would have to move the body parts of little stick people little by little, and 25 hours of work may end up with only 10 seconds of show. Though tired, I found accomplished after realizing a dream since childhood. What I can do more is to add sounds when a stick person gets hit, and add background to the fight scene because it may seem somewhat boring without one.

The last project I've done is the net art project, which I already reflected in my self evaluation form. So I won't talk about it here.

For the final project, I haven't got a great idea yet about what I am going to do. But for now, what on my mind is to integrate as much knowledge I've learnt in class as possible in my final project. Which should definitely involve the use of Photoshop, Flash and Garage Band.

Net-art Project

For the net-art project. I'd like to make my site as a small the game. As for now, the game may be one that asks people to find the difference between two pictures. If he can find the difference, he can go to the next level, which is a different set of pictures. If he clicks some place else, he may fail the game.
I will employ Dreamweaver to make the site. Also, I will use photoshop to make the differences between two pictures.

This Week's Blog--AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE (the Sticker)

The piece of art that I am going to critique is the Sticker made by artist Evan Roth. The art is simply a sticker with the words "available online for free" on it, and a red sticky background. The artist then stick the sticker on several softwares and movies and take pictures of them, meaning that you can download them freely from the internet. This is a very creative way to address the pirating issue in the IT area and a powerful question of the role of the internet. I like it because it is nearer to our everyday life.

This week's blog-Underglow (2005) - Susan Collins

Underglow is a piece of art that illuminated a number of separate gullies (drains) in the vicinity of Guildhall Yard, King Street and Queen Street and they were visible from dusk to dawn from November 2005 until February 2006. I like that piece of art particularly because from the picture we can see that the drains glow green light, which looks like what drains look like in the future. Also, green gives people a sense of chemicals, which suit with the idea of drain. So I like it very much.

Flash Project

(It takes forever to upload my flash movie, I will try to upload it again later)

For the flash project, I'd like to make one with the theme of Chinese Martial Art. Chinese martial art is famous in the world and is what I've always been fascinated in. Thousands of movies were casted and millions of books were written about it, one example known well in the western society is the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Chinese Martial Art is not just violent fighting, it is a state of mind, a way of communication with others and the society, and a beauty. But it surely will require a lot of details of human movements. I will try my best to make it as detailed as possible. Also, after learning interactivity in Flash, I may try to add some interactivity in my project.

Tree