Final - Graduation Trip

     I’m a Food Science student. I love my major and I want to introduce it to everyone. Thus, at the beginning of making this project, I was thinking to create a video as an introduction of Food Science. However, when I searched pictures in my computer, I found tons of pictures of my “graduation trip”. Apparently, I’m not graduated. That was my previous roommates’ in China. I’m a transfer student, and I spent 3 years with those girls. We are now in different countries, but I want to record our sweet memories. Finally, I decided to change my mind to make a video about our graduation trip.

     Our university was in Beijing, China. We took off from Beijing. Our journey began at Wuxi, then went to Suzhou and Shanghai. It shows lots of food in the video. I choose these pictures to imply our major – Food Science. Besides, all of us are crazy about amazing food. We could spend a whole day searching for a secret but wonderful restaurant. I used 2 pictures of cats. There was a yellow fat cat in our college, many people fed it including us. Unfortunately, it was never found since our junior year. We miss it so much. I chose these pictures to show our love to cats. Overall, it was a trip. Thus, I chose pictures of interests to show the unique of each place.

     The theme I used shows postcards at the beginning of the video. It implies that we are still staying in touch. I used album transition between different place or theme of our journey, and fade out transition between similar pictures. I used maps when we got to another city. It would be easy to follow. The music I used was a song from a cartoon that all of us like. At the end, I wrote down my wish – the journey will not end.

     This video was made in my own interest. I will share this piece with my friends as long as all the sweet memories. We are best friends forever.

#10 Final brainstorm

     I’m a Food Science student. The reason why I chose the major is that I love food, and I want to figure out what is behind that delicious food, or maybe how to make it more desirable. Food is not just what we need to survive, like other material, it can reflect our lifestyle or who we are.

     For the final project, I want to create a video to show why and how I became a food scientist, what we do daily, and maybe what I will be in the future. Food science is not like what people usually think as just cuisine. It is more chemical and more biological. It can be artistic with lots of amazing reaction. We have pilot plant and chemical labs. In the video, I would take some pictures and clips to show you how this things work. I love to introduce my favorite to others. 

Failure

     My biggest failure in this class was that I always thought about normal or natural thing when brainstorming. It should not be limited in just real object. Arts can be abstract. You can see all my projects reflexed reality somehow. My creativity was limited by the real world. When I realized that, I was trying to think what happened around me rather than what I can make. It is always a good way to start with an action, not a certain object.

     My biggest success was that I work seriously on every project, and I did learn a lot. It was fun to play with the Photoshop, iMove and Garageband for the project. I had no idea at the beginning sometimes, but I started with small steps. It might come up with a better idea later, then I change my subject. As long as I was familiar with the application, it is not difficult to run another project in a short time.

     If I could redo on project, I will change the Map (micro-project 2). In that project, I just took a screenshot as my background and added some pictures. I didn’t use much technic or effect, and the way I made the map was not creative. Many wonderful projects from classmates were shown in class. They inspired me a lot. Next time, I will probably make a hand drawing map or knock several buildings together as the background, and isolate something I think interesting on the road and insert the map. Anyway, it could be done in a more creative way.

MP5 - Wrapped Block O

Action words: to knot, to tighten

     The object I chose was premium wrap. I paid attention to everything I used after I got home with this micro-project. When I opened the package of catfish which was prepared for dinner, I found the premium wrap was all stuck together and it was hard to get them apart. It suddenly turned the light bulb on – I could make a piece with the sticky premium wrap! I was thinking about making something interesting. When I was checking my e-mails, an ad of Ohio State Ring caught my eyes. Actually, it was the letter “O” on the ring. Then, I decided to make an “O” to show respect to our university.

     It took me about 12*55 in² of premium wrap in total. I made the wrap a rope, knotted it as a ring, and then twined with another piece of rope and tightened them. I got a thin ring at first, but it was not strong enough to hold the octagon structure of the letter O. Thus, I added some more wrap to the ring until it was thick enough to fold and keep the structure. After molding the octagon, my work was done – Wrapped Block O.

MP4 - Experience in corridor

     There is a long corridor in my apartment building. My home is at one end of the corridor. I have to open tons of doors to get to my friends’, which is at the other end. It is a corridor without any window, so there is nothing much to see, it is quite focus me on my hearing and smelling. It is quite interesting that I can smell different things when opening each door, and I begin to guess what it is. Sometimes I can hear what they are doing, but not always. It was difficult to show what I smell in the video, so I decided to pick up several things I can hear or just imagine that I hear when I smell. When I heard these things I drew a picture in my mind, like those scenes displayed in my video.

     The first door in the video was the door of my home. As I mentioned, I live at the end of building, so I can hear birds singing in the morning from the side door. The second door was in the corridor. When opening, I smelled a fresh odor of breakfast. Suddenly, I heard a sound seemed to be from the toaster. I imagined that the household was making a delicious meal. When the third door is opening, I heard someone washing, probably brushing his teeth. It was an interesting experience that I could know what is happening around even I couldn’t see.

     I recorded as I walked through the corridor, took several photos shown what I imagined, then put them together in iMovie. I took 3 video clips of mimicry of what I heard and smelled, separated the sound from the clip, and then adjusted the length and synced them with the pictures in my video. The video shows the cross sense when walking in the corridor. There are more than three doors, but I have to keep the video in 1 minute so I just picked up 2 of them with one of my home.

#9 Response to Carver “Cathedral”

     In the article, narrator talks about his experience with his wife’s blind friend. At the beginning, his wife seemed to have a special relationship with the blind man, which made the narrator jealous. That is a funny part and reduces me to read and find out what happen later on. When they met, the narrator showed unfriendly to the blind man, and he didn’t know how to communicate with a blind man since he never had a friend liked that. The atmosphere was a little awkward until his wife fell asleep and they began a real conversation. The narrator tried to watch the blind man’s feeling and described cathedral on TV. Then, they started to draw a cathedral as the blind man suggested. It was a different experience that the narrator never had before. At the end, I think he could understand the blind man more.

     The narrator mentions that the blind man touched his wife years before, and himself was drawing the cathedral with his eyes closed. It tells me even though someone is blind, he could or has to feel the world in other ways. It might be more about a feeling deep in heart.