Final Project--Finally

I am not a good blogger. It has been over a month since I finished my final project and I'm just now getting to it. Let's blame it on FREEDOM. Yay! Graduation! No more "have to's!"

Ok. Done.

My final project was fabulous. I loved working on it and getting it together. I did an art installation. I had two distinct areas in the installation based upon the same idea. The title of my project was:

"Senescence"

The main focus was the video I made from the layers I created in Photoshop to make the print I framed behind the door. I found a door screen that I used for the video screen. Rich loved the pun. No one caught it unless it was pointed out. I found a lot of broken urns and two fabulous wrought-iron rails that I draped with muslin I drenched in mud and ironed to set the mud. (I've since cleaned my iron...it was a mud-caked mess!)


The video itself was a slooooowwww dissolve from one layer to the next so that you didn't know it was even happening unless you either watched it really carefully or you turned away from it then came back only to see a different image on the screen. I LOVED it. It was my favorite part! But it was lost on so many people. We live in a world of instant gratification and immediate results that no one had the patience to really engage in the video. Oh well. I loved it and so did Rich and if it were in a real gallery I think it would be appreciated.

I pulled from past photos plus I made new photos all based on that theme and turned the photos into the interactive part of my project. I set up two computers plus the Johnny Box. (It couldn't be removed from the room so I appropriated it...it worked wonderfully!) I created an .html program that worked off hot spots on each photo. Depending upon where you click on the photo determined the next photo. It was interesting to watch what happened when people got "stuck" doing the same photo sequence numerous times. If it was the same photo sequence for each person, I would have been concerned. But the sequencing was different for different people so I knew it wasn't a glitch.


The purpose of the interactive portion was to give each person their own experience of "senescence." Depending upon what interested them in the photo determined the outcome.


I had a lot of positive response to it.

I appreciate Rich so much. He saved my master's degree. If I had done a website, I could not have pulled my studies together into a cohesive whole and I would have always wondered what the hell it was all about for me. But my final project truly codified my studies and made it worthwhile.

So, thank you, Rich Edwards. You read me well and pulled the essential Dezra out and into the open.