Create a work of art using at least two mediums that we have covered throughout the semester: stop-frame animation, sound, or video. Your piece should be 2-5 minutes in length.

--Your piece should ask the viewer to consider an idea, relationship, or concept.
--Your work should not use traditional narrative structures.

Reina Apraez

Prabighya Basnet:

Spirit she evokes

The pictures and the video denote the multiplicity within the life of a woman. It comes from expectations, being around and being born into. You associate with the given and you take the step outside the familiar space. All takes place, all makes you and all transforms you. You get forced and you realize.Once you step out of spirituality to seek the experience, you get caught into the emotionless isolated space, captivated by lines and numbers. You see so much; feel so much, making yourself open to the world almost vulnerable. You open and you go back to the birth land, back to the similar expectation and become foreign again. Basically, it is many of everything.

How much can you take and how much are you left with, how much are you willing to flesh out to let loose. What do you consider being evoked?

Anita Cheung:

Keeping Alone

My first inspiration is from the book New Moon by Stephanie Meyers and my second inspiration is from personal experiences. I wanted to represent a moment of loneliness and desperation similar to Bella’s position. I also wanted to document my struggle with body insecurities and the inability to move towards the future. In both situations, Bella is alone and so am I. Bella and I are similar in that we cannot move towards the future. I struggle with body issues everyday and go back and forth from dieting. I am so afraid of losing time from life because of the battle. Bella is battling herself. She is constantly distracting herself with schoolwork in order to not think about her loss. The beads are the distraction. We are both so scared that if we decide to move on then we lose something familiar and close to heart. Behind the brave face, there is a confused adolescent waiting to be loved and rescued. The ending shot illustrates a cry for help for Bella’s situation and an angry scream for my case. My last option is to keep to myself and remain in solitude for eternity. This piece is for every insecure person to remind that he/she is never alone. Do not keep alone, remember to breathe.

Rosie Cleland:

Once Upon the Light and Bright

This piece depicts the thoughts and feelings I had in my childhood and those that come into the present. The video is a representation of they why my mind sees, things, remembers and dreams, which are all the elements that make up how I see myself. I wrote my video through color, which not only brings out the youth in the project but is a symbol of who I am as a person. It begins with my eyes opening to the world as a flower with the sense of a fairytale. The sunrise and the white are more pure and bring me into awareness but in an unclear sense. As the piece moves on I discover more of who I am through joys and sorrows. Time moves faster and faster as life goes on. It finishes with my future goal of knowing who I want to become, represented by the words, “I see you in my dreams.”

Alex Corwin:

Hero Movie

In this video piece I illustrated the idea of taking the image of “super hero” and altering it in a way to show how they are really just like us. As we define a super hero in our minds we think of the cape, jumpsuit, mask, and of course the special abilities. What we don’t see is the other side to being the super hero, the normal and typical routine work that we, non-super people, have to go through every day. In a comedic sort of way, I think I showed the juxtaposition of this occurrence by keeping the filming simple and the costumes a little ridiculous. Showing the characters with their hidden identities in the first couple scenes sets up a funny relationship to the later normal activities that are done still in their super hero attire. Having them wear the super hero outfits while they complete regular activities makes the actions seem more amusing. Thus I was portraying the super hero not as some sort of God but as a simple ordinary human born with the title of: “special”.

Emily Cronin

My piece shows a glimpse into a reflection of life. I wanted to show the beauty in simplicity, making us slow down in viewing each shot of one girl, who becomes our main character. We as the viewers are meant to feel as if we are staring at the subject through a photograph. This photograph zooms in to the subject and she turns to look at us and engage us in the mystery of the scene we are about to enter into. The memories are unclear and sometimes fast paced and leave us wondering what we saw and how this relates to our main character. Usually in a reflection the subject is the main character, but the girl is always shown as an outsider. Our lives are made up of reflections in which we are the outsiders looking in to our past and searching for meaning in the faded and ambiguous memories. Our lives are in constant motion yet we are uninhibited when we live for the present.

Andrew Emerson:

Hypothesis

For the final I started listening to one of my favorite songs, (Day and Night, by kid cudi) I listened to it over and over, diagramming its major forms and the motion I felt it conveyed. I took these ideas and rendered them using stop animation. I compiled them to flow along with the original song. Then because I wanted to see how well I was conveying my own ideas to my audience, I had a close musical friend watch the silent animation, and then for the second viewing I had him beat-box a reply how he felt it should fit, as it came out naturally. The final sound is the original take and even though it doesn’t fit as perfectly as the initial song, it creates a new and very unique piece of art. The initial reaction to a piece of art is extremely unique. My friend had no real time to contemplate the very detailed form of the animation, but the large forms of the piece are clearly echoed in his response to the animation. I later made a second version of taking his sounds and editing them to my idea of the piece, but I realized this was untrue to what I was trying to accomplish and concluded that the initial response was the most honest and conveyed the results of my experiment the best.

The results of this project were very unexpected for me, although I imagined a very different outcome, the actual response was very rewarding because it meant that there is a general feeling that my work portrayed and yet every person who sees it responds to it in there own light.

Karen Mattes:

Happily Ever After

Stories are one of the most important forms of communication that we as human beings have. One person’s experience, when shared in a story, has the ability to become representative of a much broader community and given new meaning with each retelling. Whether told vocally or recorded on paper stories also have the ability to transport the audience to new worlds, real or imagined; physical constraints of doors and windows are not able to hold you back when you are wrapped up in a story.

Today, with the spread of globalization, stories are being shared across cultures and the spaces being explored are becoming more easily accessible. New stories are arising as cultures clash and blend, weaving new narratives from a variety of voices. However, traditional tales can still be useful not only for illuminating the past, but for reflecting upon our present, as a commentary on what stories we still find important enough to share and as a means of comparing our current morals with those of other cultures and the past.

Duy Nguyen

Easton Smith:

Consumption

This video drew on themes of overconsumption, materialism, and consumerism. The main character in the beginning represents the consumer, wearing as many layers of clothing as he can and holding various electronics. His material objects then turn on him, taking on a life of their own until they completely consume the main character and he is sucked down through the pile of clothing into a trash world.

I would like viewers of this piece to consider our relationship with nature and to be cautious of valuing material objects over their own creative potential.

Negarin Sadr

Element of Life

In this video I decided to portray the domination of humans against nature that evidently disturbs the natural cycle of life. Water, is an essential element in life (made of H20), hence, hydrogen is one of the most important elements of life. Unfortunately, mankind has created a weapon that is capable of destroying half of a continent or even the whole universe with nuclear bombs that are created using the fusion energy of hydrogen isotopes. This weapon clarifies where the power of man stands within the universe. Many are killed, conflict continues between many nations solely as a result of the invention of the nuclear weapon. The existence of this weapon could bring us to ‘the last day of earth’. The day mankind predict in the power of the supernatural, thus, it is evidently made with our invention and control.