Project Numba Two, playa.

Second project is not coming so well for me. I've got the ideas and most of the media that I want to use, but I'm struggling mightily with the software to get it to work. Google maps is not letting me upload my pictures to it, so I'm thinking of abandoning that idea all together and just linking Google maps straight to my "Second Project Blog." Basically, the idea is that there will be several points on the map and each one will represent a "journal entry" for a specific day, and each journal entry brings my character closer to his goal about discovering his origins. I have a lot of video uploaded that I'd like to use, cataloging my character's journey around Morgantown. I also have the idea for a fake "phone call" recorded on audacity that I can post into the blog to further the idea about sound. The whole mystery about the origins is supposed to have a comical undertone, as I'm trying to make fun of the idea of the conventional "Charles Dickens Style" narrative. My narrator is a hat, but he is totally cool with being a hat, only, the rest of the world thinks it's weird (trust me, walking down high street on Saturday night with a hat and a camera gets you some funny looks). Anyway, the mystery will not really be resolved, but will have a climax where the mysterious antagonist "Mike King" will enter the story, leading to my character realizing certain things about himself.

Sound Poem Response

My sound poem is a sort of precurser too my second project about sequence. The "poem" serves as an introduction to the narrative going to be told by my hat traveling around the world on a journey to discover much about his origins. Part of the goal of this project is to explode (at least partially) the conventions about point of view, as my narrative will be reflectively critiqued during it's delivery by myself (that is, the hat). I attempt to show this in today's sound poem as my voice frequently breaks in over top of the original narrative (which for my main project, would most likely be a different voice entirely) to attempt to show how flimsyness of the narrative. I used some white noise in my poem to highlight where the originial narrative is broken off for my "impartial" comments on myself, and I also underly the whole thing with a techno song entitled "Zombie Nation" to try and bring up some more ideas about the narrator (a zombie narrator would be awesome--or perhaps we're all zombies and that's why the hat is telling the story). Plus, I like the techno song. Lack of a rhyme scheme indicates that the narrator, like the poem, is very unconventional--because a hat speaking in rhymes is just TOO ridiculous.

src= "http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf" quality="high" width="300" height="52" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars= "valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=">http://www.clc.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/center/Sound%20Poem.mp3/download" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">

Thoughts on Project 2

For project two, I was thinking about telling the story of my first few weeks in Morgantown (an invented fantasy, full of dragons, Clark Hall of Chemistry wreathed in flame, etc) through the point of view of a hat I obtained early on the first day of school. Mystery will surround the hat and its origin, but the sequence will proceed towards knowing where it has come from almost as if the mystery of the hat is what is really important--and since the point of view is from the hat, it will almost be an amnesia type situation. I'm thinking of using a lot of Chicago as background music and the hat will have an audible voice most likely with a girl and a guy speaking at once so the gender of the hat cannot be determined until nearer the end. The details I'm not quite sure about because I haven't started playing with the software yet, but I think I'll probably use a combination of several options, including Google Maps (which might serve as my base?), the GIMP, and luckily, my roommate has Acid Pro, so I'll likely use that to edit my sound.

Blogz number dos.

I've created a second blog in order to do my 2nd project which has to do with sequences and an unfolding narrative.

Project One FINAL (With metatext, YES.)

The title of my project one is "Down the Rabbit Hole", and it is adapting a text by Lewis Carroll "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland." I chose three small passages from the fairly long children's book and mashed them up with the WVU school colors and a distorted image of the "Flying WV." The primary goal of the way the text is notated is to attempt and compare Alice's Wonderland to the wonderland we all emmerse ourselves in when we enter college. As one reads the main passage, his eye travels down the image, climbing over the many impediments placed in the image--the color blocks, the designs and the other passages. It is an attempt to allow the kinesthetics of the image to let the reader travel down the image into their own "Mini wonderland" just as Alice follows the rabbit into her strange adventure. Unfortunately, as the reader's eye travels down the words they begin to become increasingly less clear and harder to read, much like reality begins to degrade for Alice as increasingly strange things happen to her. The text "I had such a curious dream" is located in the top right hand corner to suggest to the reader that maybe what they're reading isn't actually real. This is an important part of the image as the main point of the image is that reality is not as "real" as one may initally believe it to be. The flying WV may not be as clear cut as one believes, life may not be as simple as just "being a Mountaineer," and maybe hitting the clubs on Friday night is just our version of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

The main notations I tried to use were the use of motion of the eye (as mentioned above), the the use of integrated pictures and dissolving text, and different styles of the text appearing in the image. The main text is written in fairly normal font just using the text box, but the words in the upper right hand corner are written with a paintbrush, almost as if they were added as an afterthought--that maybe, just maybe, it WASN'T all a dream, and Wonderland, "reality," and WVU are all the same place.

One more try.

Project one that actually fits.

Project one that actually fits.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc3ncx7m_0h434jxfd

Project one

Project one "Ideas"

For my project (as beforementioned) I'm thinking about adapting some sections of Alice in Wonderland. More specifically, I'm trying to show the dissolution of reality through the visualization of sections of the book. I'm thinking of using the very first lines in the book,

" Down the Rabbit Hole"

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "Without pictures or conversations?"

"In another moment down went Alice after the rabbit, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again"

I think this is the main text I'm going to work with, although I may add some more later depending on how I make the text visual. I"m thinking of making the later section of text progressively more tranparent, as if it's fading out of reality (and into wonderland), and also making the text spiral down, as if it is the text itself is spinning into wonderland. I also want to set the background as a picture of something iconic from the campus of WVU, attempting to show that wonderland and reality are really the same place. Another option is a swath of different colors for the text, making it appear surreal.

1st Project Introduction

For the first project I'm thinking about adapting parts of Alice in Wonderland into a visual text, maybe trying to show the way that reality can easily dissolve into fantasy as Alice discovers Wonderland. I like this project because it's so different from most other English projects that tell us to "write 4-5 pages on how reality dissolves into fantasy in Alice in Wonderland." The end result will have similar ideas, but the ways that one goes about writing them are totally different. This process of creating a visual text should be interesting and fun, but I'm a little confused about how to go about the actual "notation" of Carrol's text since I can't work with any kind of animations or picture editing. This is the only drawback to the project, otherwise I feel pretty confident about my ability to create a visual text that meshes the visual and the written.

Questions would be:

Can we play with some animations if we want for our visual text, or just pictures and rearrangement of words?

If I choose to adapt a work do I have to use every word of it.