ART AND TECH

I took an interesting, unorthodox approach to my Xerox project. Instead of using photocopies of my hands to explain a story/concept through pictures, I decided to utilize my film major and make a video. Let’s begin with the process. I had great difficulty accessing a printer that worked. It took three stops to finally find one that did, hopping around from the art center to the Cass lab to the Library. Once I was finally able to get photocopies of my hand, I started to cut. After cutting out one detailed hand I realized that without the black background my natural hand doesn’t pop like it should. Rather it just looks like a piece of white paper. I made the executive decision to leave the black background behind my hands, a different approach that you can see in my video. For the video I used stop motion, taking individual frames to conduct a story. I made the story based on my most common study habit. The story starts with hands working on a document which can be seen on the c...

CUBAN CHEEKS A documentary created by Gus and I that explores the Cuban culture. Our subject was our friend Javier, a first-year student here at the University of Tampa. Javier, also known as Javi was a Cuban refugee the escaped as an infant via boat. Although he has spent most of his life as an American, he still keeps his native culture alive and spreads it in every way he can. He is known for greeting people through a kiss on the cheek, a popular routine of his culture. I have known Javi since day one, and through an outside perspective I have been able to see people’s uncertainty, discomfort, and confusion when he gives them a kiss on the cheek.  In order to study this furthermore, we decided to conduct a social experiment for my performance piece. We set a goal to reach 100 kisses in one day, but due to time restraints and increased motivation we attempted to do so in one hour, raising the stakes. To answer the questions mentioned in your email, unfortunately we c...

For this assignment, I decided to create a Rotoscope animation, drawing on video frames. To begin the process, I took a fight scene that I filmed in high school and traced an outline of every other frame in photoshop. Through hours of tracing, I was finally able to have a complete rough draft with basic sketches. Next I went through the rough draft frame for frame and connected any lines that I had previously missed. This allowed me to easily use the paint bucket tool in photoshop to add color to my art. Once all color was added, I experimented with different gradient backgrounds. I concluded that a blue to grey gradient fit the best. Finally I grabbed my guitar and recorded music using my interface and garage band. Adding various apple loops and drums to fill up my sound, I threw it in Final Cut Pro with the completed rotoscope and lined everything up. Attached are the steps and finished product. Enjoy :)

The past four days I have spent a total of 24 hours in a professional recording studio with my band, 6STRING. During our studio sessions we completed two songs which will be released on Spotify and Apple Music within the month. We began the process by recording drums. With over twelve drum mics strategically placed by the millimeter, we spent a whole day making sure everything was tight and in time to the metronome beat for beat. Day two we knocked out all the guitar parts. By the end of the day my hand was cramping but I knew I had done the best job possible. Our bassist threw down some sick lines that we weren’t expecting, and through experimentation we made a solid track. Finally, we added a slight bit of synth just to fill up the overall sound, completing all instrument tracks. Day three: Vocals. Boy this was a fun one. Our poor singer had to belt out his voice for hours until we had everything perfect. Our bassist as well as myself went into the booth to record backup vocals. The...

The overall process of creating the camera obscura was a lot more fun and creative than I anticipated. Our basic strategy was to cover the window with black garbage bags, cut a tiny hole in the center, and let the magic happen. Unfortunately, it was not this easy. The original hole we cut was too big, so we had to patch up the garbage bag with miscellaneous materials (i.e. Einstein Bagel bags) in order to shrink the hole to the most proficient size. Once we had done so, the camera obscura had worked! We began to see the projection of the buildings on the walls. Although we had success, the projection still was not as clear as we would have liked it to have been (so unclear we couldn’t even get a picture that wasn’t all black), so we put experimented with a camera lens. Still no results.  With failure using the camera lens, we knew it was time to start getting creative to get results worth blogging about. In order to clarify and really appreciate the natural projection, we decide...

         Madama Butterfly is a tragic love story with a devastating conclusion, focusing on the sad realities of unequally reciprocated love. When asked to write an essay about how I could turn this 20 th century opera into a modern, 21 st century video game, I found myself stumped for quite some time. How could one turn this piece of art into a contemporary form of technology one may ask? I can to conclude that the best way to go about doing this would be to offer various character modes, offering a change in perspective. In order for my interpretation of the story to fit well in to a video game, I would incorporate multiple modes in which you can play as different characters throughout the duration of the story. The three main character’s I would include would be: Madama Butterfly, Lieutenant Pinkerton, and Sharpless. Kate Pinkerton would be a viable fourth option for certain scenes as well if needed. This way, I could create an entertaining game that wo...