4D Intermedia Blog

For this project, our assignment was to create a video using three perspectives about a topic that we got to choose. I chose to focus on Coffee, and so my three perspectives were myself getting coffee from the DC, my friend/classmate Ashley, and then my friend/Westmont alum Danny Rob. I recorded myself getting DC coffee, and then Ashley brewing coffee in her dorm room and talking about why she loves coffee. I asked Danny to send some videos of him making coffee, and he was super generous to send videos of him creating a latte at work, and then of him talking about his processes and love for coffee. I used the program iMovie to create my video, and it was a challenge because I had to put the video together and not use original audio from any of the clips. I used the songs Bubbly, Banana Pancakes, and Island in the Sun to be the backgrounds of the videos. I also used audio of Ashley and Danny talking in the backgrounds.

For the 5x5 video project, we were told to create a 25 second video using 5 clips that were only 5 seconds each. I was not in class the day that the project was announced so I was really lost, but I was told by others to just create video clips of anything. I chose to go throughout my day and create clips using spots around campus and just filming anything interesting. My first clip is of the duck pond on lower campus, and I just find the pond to calming. I wanted to show the water flowing and just have the viewers feel relaxed. The second clip is of me walking, and I randomly decided on this clip because I thought it turned out cool, even though it was just my feet. In the third clip, I chose to film my friend's fish tank, because I found it a little entertaining how the fish were swimming in different directions. The fourth clip shows the printing press in the printmaking studio, and I filmed this because I took printmaking this semester, and I enjoy using that press for my proj...

For this project, we had to make a performance that would last at least 5-7 minutes and use the love language of Generosity. As it was to be performed on Halloween, I wanted to be generous by giving out candy. I decided to take a plastic pumpkin bowl and wrap it with tissue paper. To make the generosity more personal, I decided to include more than just the typical Halloween candy. I chose to fold little pieces of paper together and have sayings like "You are loved" and "I'll do a photoshoot for you" written on each piece of paper. To make this project interactive with the class, I decided to have everyone get in a circle and have their eyes closed. As I came around to them and tapped them on their hands, they got to pick between using a fishnet, tongs, or their hands to reach in the bowl and pick out candies and notes. I thought this performance was really fun and I'm glad that it was interactive because I felt like the class found it enjoyable. ...

For this week's project, we were given the opportunity to do a ritual performance. Our task was to choose a specific site and create a ritual that we would repeat for 5 days. I chose to purchase two flower plants from a nursery in Goleta and grow them as my ritual performance. Originally, I was going to use both the white daisies and the yellow flowers, but the white daisies ended up not blooming as fast as I wanted to. I wanted to depict the growth that I have gone through during my time here at Westmont. Along with growing the plants, I chose to pray during the 5 days for different things like peace and strength. For the first two days, Wednesday and Thursday, the plants were in the budding stage, so they weren't blooming yet. On the Friday, I watered the plants and they seemed to start the blooming process. I ended up going home for the weekend due to a family situation and I just felt I needed to go home, so I took my plants with me so that I could continue the pro...

This past week we got a new project, where we had to make an installation. We had to find a forgotten space on campus that not many people remember and change the area in some way. My partner C.C. and I chose the little cove right by Professor DeBoer’s office window and decided to focus on the idea of homelessness. We wanted to express the fact that we see so much homelessness around us, under the overpassed, on sidewalks in downtown Santa Barbara, etc. Our intention was to show that we here at Westmont are not really aware of how much we have, especially here in Montecito, where we don’t see any homelessness at all. In order to do this, we found a sleeping bag, blanket, hoodie, and we put together a bag of water bottles, and a sign that says “Will work for food”. We installed our items under the little cove by putting the blanket in the sleeping bag, and then surrounding with the sign, water bottles, and hoodie. We chose to name our piece “Walk By” because lots of people tend to just ...

For this project, we had to discover new materials and find ways to assemble them together. When we were first introduced to this project, we looked at examples of assemblages that people have done in the past. We then went to Westmont's Ridley Tree Museum to view Tony Askew's work, in which he creates a lot of assemblages with varying themes. To get more inspiration, we viewed the recent exhibition at Sullivan Goss, where we found more assemblages made by artists here in Santa Barbara.  After getting some creative ideas from the shows, we visited Alpha Thrift Store, where our mission was to find miscellaneous objects that we could put together in an assemblage. From that little trip, I found a package of seashells and a ceramic cup. At the beginning of the project, I struggled with figuring out what I wanted to assemble using the shells and the cup. I decided to paint some of the shells using acrylic paint and design some cute patterns on them. When we had our first group crit...