Perceptions

Once a year I get to meet up with my best friend from high school when she comes to Indy for GenCon. It's always around my birthday and she always brings me a gift.

This year she brought me a hat. A fedora-type hat.



She said the moment she reached out for it it screamed "DEZRA!"

I stared at it for an eternity in stupefaction while watching myself take the hat into my hand and smiling hugely and saying, "Oh, it's perfect!"

Huh?

Not that I don't appreciate the gift. What dumbfounds me is that Laura's perception of me includes this hat. A hat I have no idea what I'm going to do with. Where did this perception come from?

I'm finding this an interesting meditation. What is it about me that makes Laura think this hat screams my name? What does the hat represent to Laura that she attributes to me? What is the meaning of the hat and it's relationship to me in Laura's experience of me?



And then the flip side is, why don't I see this in myself? It must exist because Laura is able to pin that hat on me because of some perception I've given her of myself.

Granted, I used to wear hats when I was in high school but I've moved on from then. Maybe she sees me as an artist and the hat represents a certain artistic styling. Or perhaps it comes from my desire to be sophisticated and perhaps that hat represents some degree of sophistication. Urban sophisticate? I don't know.

It is something I will need to think about. And perhaps I should give the hat a try. Maybe it'll bring out the inner...um...hatness that is me.

Screwing Up

I was watching "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch (very inspiring btw) when he made a comment about screwing up. He said that one time when he was young and on a football team, the coach kept pushing him and riding him and making him do push ups for not performing, etc. Afterwards, one of the assistant coaches came to him and told him that it was a good thing--it meant that the coach thought he was worth the trouble. Then Randy said, "When you're screwin' up and no one is saying anything anymore, that means they gave up."

This comment struck me forcibly. I wrote the quote down but I don't know why. I thought at first that it was a reminder to myself that it's ok to screw up as long as I keep trying so that others want to continue to help me better myself. But it wasn't until today that I realized that, no, the comment wasn't directed towards me.

What I discovered today was that it was directed towards my relationship with someone else. I didn't realize this other person was screwing up until today when I finally gave up.

The quote then made sense to me.

The assumption, though, is that giving up is a bad thing. I don't believe that for a moment. Giving up means letting go of expectations. I don't know what will come out of this "giving up." My relationship with this person will definitely change, but the question is, "how?" Will it survive? Oddly enough, the giving up part makes it easy to be at peace with the possibility that it won't survive. And I suspect it won't survive.

Sagamore Ad

The School of Informatics wanted a list of classes advertised in the upcoming Orientation magazine put out by the Sagamore (the school newspaper). In the past, I was given a list of classes plus what they were about and a lot of other verbiage that was really difficult for me to deal with. Last year I didn't know enough nor have enough confidence in myself to say "cut the verbiage!"

I've come a long way since last year. This year I have been working off the concept of "bold, trendy, and cool" for the School of Informatics. With that in mind, I went with the sunglasses theme and a one-word simple exclamation. sweet. My sons tell me that's the new "cool."

I have ulterior motives in my designs now. I don't know about the rest of the department, but I have decided that the single message is "bold and cool." That's the experience that I want the students to have when they view my designs. And that's what I want the students to think about themselves. They are bold and cool.

Tick Tock Goes the Clock

I've been thrown into chaos and I'm trying to sort it out. I love where I work. I love the people. I love, for the most part, what I do. And because I love it, I give a lot to it. I enjoy going to work. I will stay late and I will do a lot at home. What I do at work is what I enjoy doing at home.

I'm paid hourly, but I don't care. I log 40 hours a week even though I do more. I've been asked to be more conscientious of my time and not to overdo it. But I don't know what else I would do.

A huge part of who I am lies in giving. If I truly enjoy someone or something, I will do almost anything for them/it. It's very selfish, this giving thing. I give because I love how I feel, I love DOING something for someone or something I like. The giving is the reward. It's essential to who I am. It feeds me.

Starting Monday, the School of Informatics will be going to the TIME system of keeping track of work hours. I didn't understand what that meant until we had a training meeting (the most pathetic training meeting I've ever attended, btw).

During that meeting I realized that I now have to clock in and out and that I can't clock more than 40 hours a week.

The longer I sat there, the angrier I got. After the meeting I ended up in tears (and I still feel angry and end up in tears...even as I write this).

This is what I'm trying to sort out. Why am I so angry? Why do I feel like I've been slugged in the gut?

I want to say it's because I feel like what I have given freely has been rejected. But is that it? I feel restrained, constricted, chained.

It truly irritates me that I now have to watch the clock. I can't log in more than 40 hours and I have to keep track on a daily basis how much time I'm logging in. And what's worse, I have only a six minute time frame at the end of the week to "catch" my 40 hours. IUPUI pays in six minute increments.

This is a disaster.

I am so afraid that what I used to love doing will now become a chore because restrictions have been placed on it.

I hate restrictions when it comes to something I love.

Hermit

I am more of a hermit than I thought I was. I always thought I was outgoing and an extrovert but I never scored really high on the extroverted scale on the MBTI, which confused me. I needed to be around people, to be with people, to be in the thick of things. But I barely made it to the extroverted side of the MBTI.

However, when I started listening to "Dezra," to that voice inside me that told me who I am, things started changing.

Before I started listening to myself, I saw myself constantly on stage, performing. And I rarely liked my own performance because I felt like it was forced and unnatural. One day I decided I would step off stage and see what happened. I would embrace my introvert.

It was awful! I was terrified. What happens if I disappear? What happens if no one sees me anymore? What happens if I become invisible. My mother was/is invisible and it scares the hell out of me to be like that.

But I had to listen to "Dezra" and she kept telling me that my insecurities stem from being on stage and wondering if people liked my performance--and of course in my mind they didn't because I didn't. I was at the mercies of others. So I stepped down off the stage.

And I wasn't noticed. I did become invisible--at least, I wasn't seen how I was used to being seen. I cried a lot during this time. I feared (and still fear) not being seen. I will be forgotten. What I trusted, though, was that I would discover those who loved me as I am, not as I pretended to be. I would make/keep friends who were truly my friends.

I don't have many of them. Less than a handful, really. And on the whole I'm content, which surprises me, also. I thought I needed more, but I don't.

This is where the hermit comes in. I find crowds of strangers to be surreal. Tonight I helped a friend of mine set up for the first Concert on the Circle in Irvington. She has tons of friends within the community. I have...well...her, I guess. I met a few people but they were all doing something regarding the concert and I just sat there. The more crowded it got, the more surreal it got. The group sang gospel and old rock tunes without the drive and kids rode bikes and people milled and jabbered and listened and I felt like I was in some Renoir painting gone bad...or at a church (bizarre) bazaar from the 50's. I no longer existed and the noises and colors and faces were of a different era.

So I left.

And I'm confused. I don't mind crowds in general. Or maybe it's that I don't like strange crowds where I know no one and have no purpose being there.

I left my car on the circle. That means I have to go back. I also left Bob hanging on a post.

Penguin PartAY

When it became known that there were boxes of vinyl penguins just sitting in surplus a terrible plot was hatched. Inflate the penguins and stuff them in Mark's office!

Yippee!!

Mark was gone for the week so Rosiel got us all together and we decorated Mark's office with penguins. Of course I had my camera and of course I took photos.

Then over the weekend I sifted through the photos and created a PDF slideshow. This is what I came up with:

It is fun and cute watching it as is, but it's even better when you are dripping with sweat in a hot and sweltering attic room with Krishna Das chanting over and over for six hours in the background and a steady source of beer at your disposal.

By the time I capped it off with "potty" humor, I was rolling on the floor with tears streaming down my face. Oh how I wish everyone else who was involved could have had the same puerile pleasure I had. They so missed out!

Mark had no idea we did this. And what's even more entertaining is that the locks had been switched out while he was gone. He had a new key but the locksmith was so screwed up that Mark's key didn't work in his lock so he had to call campus police to let him in...at 6:00 in the morning! I had made sure one of the penguins was right there as he opened the door.

He loved it.

I had to take the potty humor out of the PDF file so he could send it to friends.

Graduation

I finally graduated. Two years and a million lives later. It is so nice to be done. I'm ready for it. I never thought I'd be glad not to have classes. I've always thought of myself as a perennial student. I'd take classes forever if I could. But not now. I'm done. It's time I moved out of the protective environment of my Alma Mater. It's time to leave home.


This is Mitch. I met Mitch in my first semester and we became best friends. He has now moved to California. I'm really sad but that's what I get for making friends in college where most students do move on. This is one of my favorite graduation photos. I don't remember who took it, though. I think it was Mitch's mom.


As a master student, part of the graduate experience is being hooded. The hood is a sash that drapes down your back. When I opened the carefully wrapped square-shaped plastic bag that had my rented hood in it and pulled it out, I gasped.

"It's a vagina!" I cried. (I live alone. I can blurt out things like that.)

Imagine a Georgia O'Keefe flower painting...yes it's a flower, but it's also a vagina! Well, that's what a hood is. Yes, it's a hood, but, OMG, it's also a vagina! The pointed, oval shape. The folds. Then the clincher is this quirky hooky thing at the bottom that looks like...forgive the vernacular...a clit (I can't believe I'm writing that, but it's true!)

What's even more funny about graduating from Indiana University is that the colors are crimson and cream so it has a blood and skin reference to it!


Needless to say, as I watched all these masters and doctors walking around with their heads sticking out a metaphorical vagina, it made the ceremony palatable for me! (I don't care for graduation ceremonies...I only came because--OMG! this is too funny, I just now realized why I came--I came because of the hooding! hooowheehehehehe!)

On a more philosophical note, however, I'm glad the hoods have a vaginal look to them. As I said above, I don't care for graduation ceremonies. I haven't attended mine in the past because they really had no significant meanings for me. But this one did and discovering the "birthing" metaphor via the hood solidified the ritual.

I am a ritualistic person. I believe in the subconscious need for ritual and meaning. But the ritual must have meaning to my conscious, also, so that I can fully experience it.


Mark McCreary hooded me. It had to be Mark. He has been extremely influential in my life. If he didn't or couldn't hood me, I wouldn't have gone. Period. I was "birthed" into a new life. That's what the hooding ceremony means to me. Graduation indicates a moving on, but the hooding is the actual birthing. And I don't think it's coincidence that we call the college we attend our alma MATER

So for all it's quirkiness and humor, the hoods are pregnant with meaning (pun intended).

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.

Poster Designs

Tony, the Director of Media Arts and Science (MAS) asked me to make posters for the upcoming Capstone and Final Projects that the (MAS) students do their last semester. It's a showcase of what they've learned. I told him I didn't have time.

Later he came up to my floor and happened to see the ad posters I had been creating for the JagBuses and after descending upon Mark, he co-opted the posters. So I switched the verbage et voila! Capstone and Final Project posters.

They have been a big hit in the department with the exception of the person who designed the original poster. The Frank Tai green screen poster was the first to "air" and it became the postcard that got sent to 1200 people. The Katherine Taht computer poster was the second and the third was hottie Todd Shelton!


The one faculty member who didn't like them complained because no one was smiling. Well. That's the point. "California cows are happy cows." I'm sorry. But smiling reminds me of the California cow commercial.

When I designed this series, my first thought was the target audience...young college students. Right now urban and edgy is what they are all about. So I went with the rough look. Then I wanted to show that we are confident and practically brazen...a dare, if you will. Everyone is looking directly into the camera. And no one is to smile. The edgy, cool factor is in that brazen look.

I took a chance on this series. I know the artistic preference of someone I truly admire and I didn't think he'd go for it. Because his personal tastes are sophisticated, I didn't think he'd like it. But he's the one that ordered the postcards to be sent. I think he sees the value in it even if it isn't his personal taste. But I didn't know that. I deliberately chose to design something without fearing that he wouldn't like it.

And I've been hearing the disgruntlings of one of the faculty members. That would have caused me to question myself but I'm surprised to find that I am holding my own. I know I have a good design and I know I can design. With more practice, I will be dynamite!

What I've learned through all this is that I'm quite confident that I can design. A year ago I couldn't have taken any sort of criticism, but now I am fully pleased and I stand behind my designs.

I've come a LONG way.

Bounty vs Limits

It's a fallacy to believe that to be creative, there should be little to no restrictions. To believe that the creative flow should be free to run where it will produces creative chaos and anarchy--or, worse, no creation at all.

That's not to say there isn't a place for No Restrictions in the creative process. But to produce a strong creative piece, boundaries must be set.

When water flows freely, there is no form to it, but give it a boundary or form to fill and it fills it thickly and with purpose.

Twyla Tharp said it best in her book "The Creative Habit" (which I strongly suggest any creative person to read). She said, "Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse."

I have been struggling with my final project. I want a strong project but I have been floundering on how to approach it. It wasn't until yesterday when I learned what my limits were that my creativity, my thought processes, began to kick in and take off.

What limits do for me is to cut out all the extras, the jibberish, the nonessential elements and thus leaves me with the pieces that I can work with.

I am an Editor at heart--an archetypal Editor. I do best taking what exists and editing it so that it's beautiful or purposeful or dynamite. Coming up with ideas is NOT my forte (pronounced, FORT as a friend of mine corrects me when I pronounce it Fort-ay). But once the ideas are in place and the elements are there, I can piece them together to get a final outcome that is exceptional.

Now that I have my limits, now that I have a focus and a direction, now that I have the elements, I can move on the project and...

...now I'm excited.

Surreal Tooth Extraction

A cracked tooth landed me in a perverted Tim Burton metaphor. Overtones of Lemony Snicket and shades of Edward Gorey colored the shadows and gave face to what decreasingly called itself reality.

The 45 minute wait even though I was the only one on the waiting list and in the waiting room should have tipped me off. The uncanny appearance of the dental assistant immediately after I sent a text message to a friend saying I was going to reschedule should have tipped me off. The receptionist smiling with her mouth but not with her eyes...the dental assistant smiling with her mouth but not with her eyes...these should have tipped me off.

It wasn't until the Woman-Child with her thick-mascara, stick-straight eyelashes and zombie eyes came in that I started to get an inkling I had entered surreality. She stood always just outside of my vision and asked peppy questions, "Would you like cherry or bubble gum flavor?" When she passed in front of me, her dead eyes belied her animated voice and congenial smile. And when she blinked, her thick eyelashes swept down to her cheeks then popped back up.

The oral surgeon, forced to interact with me, swabbed the outside of my gums to prepare for the Novocaine shot. I should have said something when he didn't swab the inside of my gums but I didn't and therefore jumped out of the chair when he injected the needle into my unprepared gum.

"You are doing so well." Stick-Straight Eyelashes blinked. "Have you considered implants?"

Huh?

"I only want you to have all your options available to you." She blinked. Her mouth smiled, her eyes didn't. "You should have an implant."

My skin crawled. "My insurance won't cover it."

The oral surgeon returned. I panicked when he touched my mouth. I jerked back and turned my head. I didn't trust him. But I had to continue.

"Breathe," I told myself. "Remember to breathe. Keep breathing." The panic welled up.

Stick-Straight Eyelashes blinked and asked, "Have you not had a tooth pulled before?"

"Not since my last baby tooth," I cried.

"You're doing so well." She blinked. I imagined her nodding knowingly (as knowingly as a zombie can) to the oral surgeon.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax.

The oral surgeon dug in. I wanted to cry. My body was screaming at me, "What are you doing to me? Stop this!" All I could do was watch and console myself. The digging. The prying. The pulling. The tearing of nerves. The extraction of roots. Stick-Straight Eyelashes watched with her dead eyes and bright smile. Then the tooth was torn out and the surgeon sewed up the hole and I held back tears.

Stick-Straight Eyelashes jammed gauze in my mouth, "You did so well!" She blinked, then escorted me to a room where she put in a video for me to watch about after-surgery care (copyright 1989). I didn't watch the video. I trembled, cried, and went into shock.

The oral surgeon disappeared with my tooth. No one said anything to me about it. It's as if my tooth didn't exist. So I asked, "Where's my tooth?"

She blinked. "It had very long roots."

Stick-Straight Eyelashes gave me my after-surgery care package with prescriptions. I wanted to escape. She looked straight at me and spoke with a bright smile but there was NO ONE INSIDE. Who stole her? Did the oral surgeon extract one of her teeth?

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced I had entered a perverted Tim Burton movie with overtones of Lemony Snicket and shades of Edward Gorey.

Cobalt Blue

I have discovered, much to my educational detriment, that not having a car has limited me in getting photographs. I have been at the mercy of the bus system. So this past weekend I broke down and bought a car.

She's beautiful! On Wednesday when I decided I had to buy a car I put the Universe to the test. I told the Universe that I wanted a blue car (in my head it was cobalt blue) that got 28-32 mpg freeway driving for under $10K. And it had to be fairly new so that I wouldn't worry about repairs up front. Then I envisioned the dealership and on Saturday I went there. Right on the corner of the lot was this beautiful cobalt blue 2006 Suzuki Aerio with only 21K miles on it and after numerous phone calls to my mechanic and a lot of dickering at the dealership, I drove it off the lot. All my criteria were met!

I have since checked it out online and am satisfied that I made a decent deal.

Now to get the Internet set up! (Taking place on Thursday. Yay!)

Valentine's Day

I was demonstrating typing on Path's to my lab when I realized the juxtapositioning of text and image seemed autobiographical. I love Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken." So I used that as my text. When I demonstrated typing within a shape, I used the heart shape from the custom menu. One of the sentiments from Facebook's Super Poke emerged so I included that. Once I realized how my subconscious played a trick on me, I went with it and played around with the background, et voila!

Although the majority of this art piece is created in Photoshop, I did include one of my photos. I used a photo of a rusted door and lock, desaturated it, created a high b/w contrast, then used it as the grunge effect. Still very fitting and meaning-Full for me.

What I Photograph

Here is what I like to photograph:

Anything in decay
Old, rusted metal
Chains
Mechanical apparati (is that the plural?)
Textures
Reflections
Fragments (shards?) of anything
Close ups (almost to abstraction but not quite)
Close ups (as abstracts)
Incongruities

Symmetry by Dezra Despain

I like character and mystery. I like stories. I relish metaphors and symbolisms.

I don't photograph just to get a pretty picture. It has to have meaning.

Meaning.

All I do that has value to me is meaning-Full.

That's when photography comes alive for me.

Search for Essence

I went to my photography club yesterday. It seemed so trite after reading Sontag and Barthes. The club is a good group of people but I couldn't get past the technical treatment, the "this is how you compose a shot" theme that made no sense to me because photography's soul was taking up my mind.
Soul.
Essence.
What is the essence of photography? What is my relationship to it? How do I approach it? What is my photographic voice? What is it about photography that grips me, that pulls me in? It's not "this is how you compose a shot" and yet, that's how I've been taking photos. How do I become photography?

I'm getting a bit weary with how I approach photography. It is all about the composition, about seeing the forms and lines and repetition of shapes and colors. It is about seeing what is not seen and exposing it. And yet, I haven't liked what I've done lately. It's trivial. It's boring. It's predictable.

I think about Seeing Sideways as an antidote but am not captured by the thought because Seeing Sideways ends up about Seeing Sideways. Seeing Sideways becomes the goal. The outcome only points back to Seeing Sideways, not to the essence of the outcome. It therefore is no longer about photography. What I must do is discover the Me within Photography.

I don't know if any of this is relevant for my final project. But it is my reflections at the moment.

On Photography

I've been reading essays on photography; "On Photography" by Susan Sontag and "Camera Lucida" by Roland Barthes. Rich suggested I immerse myself in reflections on photography so that I could read how others view it and in turn uncover my own perspective. The reflections have been interesting; Sontag is depressing, reflecting on the raw, the absurd, and the hollowness of photography--at least, that's my take on her writing thus far. Barthes uses Sartre's "L'Imaginaire" to inform and direct his narrative. Up until now, I hadn't thought of photography from an intellectual or philosophical perspective so reading these two books has made me conscious of what my personal take on photography may be. I see this as an opportunity "to exhaust a philosophy...to reflect within its perspectives, and create my own private ideas at its expense..." (John-Paul Sartre)

Even though I haven't consciously thought about why I photograph what I do, I do have a perspective that I want to explore. My fascination lies in what I call "snippets" or parts of the whole. I have always been fascinated by isolation of parts, by gathering bits and pieces, whether it's in what I write or what I photograph. I'm constantly gathering "snippets."

A photograph cannot capture the whole. Perhaps that's why I like it so much. I look for the story within the story, and, even within the story; folding in on itself like a Mandlebrot fractal, looking for an essence...The Essence.

As I think about this, though, that isn't possible in photography. The closer in you get, the more the view becomes abstract and unidentifiable. I wonder, though, if it's the search that fascinates me...always searching. The journey.

How this will fit in with my project, I don't know. I'm not sure where the project is going yet.

I'm in the image gathering stage using Camera Raw. It has been difficult because I don't have a lot of time to devote to the photography now that I'm working full time and teaching part time. So I'm trying to listen to myself and work with myself and with what I have available to me so that I am satisfied and content with my subject.

I feel guilty taking photos. I should be doing something I don't like instead. But because I love taking photos, the pleasure I feel is full of guilt so I haven't taken many photos. But I plan on it this weekend.

My Final Semester Begins!

How is it that the final semester of my master's program is here? When did that happen? OMG! I feel like I've lived through lifetimes and yet have just barely started. Time has stretched and shrunk and folded in upon itself all in a matter of two years. Two years. I've slipped around and through the program. It has been wild.

Now I'm starting my final project and I want to blog about it. I want to link my thoughts about my project to the medium itself and see where it goes. I don't know what to expect with my project. I'm taking Kierkegaard's philosophical leap of faith, leaving rationality behind and stepping into the Unknown, that part of me that I know exists but that I've ignored because it scares me so.

Fall 2006, I took N503 Digital Media Application Design Processes with Richard Edwards as the professor. I did not want to take that class because traditionally it had been taught using Flash as the application and it was the traditional that I wanted to learn, but Rich decided to take it in a different direction. The direction he took it appeared to be totally useless for me.

Ultimately, N503 ended up being the one class that I value the very most from all my studies. I figured anyone who can bring Niestzche into a New Media classroom and discuss philosophy and how it relates to New Media is someone worth taking a class from. On top of that, Rich played to everyone's strengths, encouraging the class members to create a project that had value to them.

I was able to push my knowledge of Photoshop, my personal application of choice. My final project was thrilling for me...so much so that the still image of it is currently the header of this blog (the project itself was a .mov shown on the Wall...a huge screen on the UITS side of the building). I also printed it so that it fit within the framework of a door and it has hung in a gallery. Wow!

(I wish that Google Video didn't chunk my video. It runs much more smoothly than this.)

Last semester was my Semester-From-Hell (SFH). So much happened to me during that semester that I had to make choices about what I could do and think about and what I had to set aside. I set aside thoughts of my final project.

Once the SFH was over, I turned my thoughts to my final project. I had wanted to do something with art and technology but I knew it was too late to really start on something as extensive as that so I settled on a not-for-profit branding project. It was "safe." It was something I could do and it fell within the parameters of the program's expectations. But I felt I had done myself a disservice by settling for something easy. I just didn't know what else to do. Then I had to find a mentor.

My first choice was Rich, though I had two other instructors as possibilities just in case Rich was booked for the semester. I was thrilled when Rich agreed to work with me. The way I saw it was even if branding wasn't Rich's forte (one of the other instructors I had emailed is excellent at branding), he is a conceptualizer. I knew that he would get me to think differently about what I was doing. He would expand my perspective and pop me out of whatever narrow box I was rummaging around in.

When I sat in his office at our first meeting, he looked at me and said, "I don't get it, Dezra. I don't see this as something you would be doing. This isn't YOU."

I tried to explain that I had no time to think about my project during the SFH and this was all I could come up with. But Rich wouldn't hear me...THANK GOODNESS! He said, "You should be doing something with art, perhaps with your camera and photography."

I just didn't know what!

But his parting words were, "Dezra, if you decide you want to design a matchbox cover, I can turn that into a project for you. I want you to think about what you're doing and get back with me."

So I am now leaping into the unknown, working with Camera Raw because that is what is grabbing me, not knowing where I'm going with it but trusting the process...because I trust Rich. I trust that he will be able to direct me and I trust that I will be able to seize the opportunities. And I trust my gut. I don't know where it's taking me, but I'm in for a ride. And I'm thrilled.

Public Exposure

Believe it or not, I am totally taken in by Facebook. It is delightful! It is definitely a different world, one I'm not used to being in because I come out of a past that didn't include advertising yourself for everyone to see.

I am fascinated by the concept that the kids today won't know what it's like to live a local life. Today's kids are taking for granted how public they are. With websites like MySpace and Facebook giving them places to publicly expose themselves, they will never truly have privacy.

But they won't care because it's just the way life is for them. It is the air they breathe...they aren't aware there is any other way to be.

Fascinating.

Yay! I Got It To Work!

I finally figured it out. The workaround was a pain, but I did it. I got my SWF file converted to a MOV then uploaded it to YouTube. I can't believe I posted on YouTube. What is the world coming to????



Here's what I had to do. Flash 8 wouldn't preserve the transitions so I had to revert to Flash 5. Flash 5 didn't want to maintain the audio so once I exported it as an MOV, I opened it in QuickTime then saved it as a DV. I imported the DV into iMovies where I added the audio back in, having to re-edit it. Then I saved it again as an MOV.

In the process, it kept getting compressed. I'm not pleased with the quality, but what can I say? The SWF looks clean and sharp and for what I will eventually be using this for, I won't have to compress it. Thank God!

My first Flash project, done.

Public Vulnerability

Photo of Dezra taken at MacNiven's. How I want the public to see me--reflected through three sets of glass and reversed in a mirror. Safe.

I sent this post to a friend:

Aaaaaack! I just joined Facebook. I hate it! I hate it! I feel exposed and vulnerable.

So why did I join? Damn it! I'm a New Media grad student. I should understand these kinds of things. I should be up on this type of stuff.

Ick.

I just want to go wrap myself up in a blanket and hide in a closet.

But I figure if Beth H. can do it, then I can. She said that she thought she should be connected to the students using current technology, so that's why she joined. She has approached it professionally, which is the only way I'll approach it.

But I hate being "out there" where I'm on display to people I don't know. Gaaack! God, I can't believe what I've done to myself. I have a blog...that I don't advertise, but I keep it current. I have a photo account on Flickr, that I don't advertise but I keep it current. (And I was pinged on that one within minutes of uploading a specific photo...someone wanted to add it to his Flickr account...and I said YES...ugh, can you believe this???? After that guy pinged me, I had to go for a walk...I hated how I felt...exposed and vulnerable.) And now I'm on Facebook. I feel like I've set myself up to be invaded.

I hate it.

And I will probably join Second Life, which I abhor on so many levels.

But I can't get past the fact that this is our life and culture currently and if I'm to be part of it, I need to understand it. And if I'm in New Media, I should understand the new media social life. I have lived so long on past traditions, never being the one to embrace what is current. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be forward-thinking and -living. Sigh.

So I've put myself out there in cyberspace where anyone and everyone can see me. I just need to make sure that what they see doesn't truly invade my privacy.

-d