What I Would Save in a Fire

This is a weirdo picture of my kitty, Precious. I really wish I’d had it when I did the stencils. I would have loved a pic of my kitty on an piece of clothe! Anyway, my kitty is what I would save. More so, though, I would save my entire bedroom, which usually houses my kitty. Like I said, my room is my own personal little magical space, but I couldn’t figure out how to take a picture of it, because there is a cloth hanging down the middle like a wall so I couldn’t get the whole thing -sadness-.

One Image, Two Moods

These are my two moods. The first one is pretty happy, at least content. The second is less so. It’s sadder, and for me the window leading to the outdoors has a sort of background message to it, like the flowers are trapped. How sad is that? I like them more next to each other than seperatly, by the way.

In Case of Fire

If there was a fire in my house, the things I would take would be sort of strange to most people, I think. First I’d want my cat, Precious. I don’t think that’s so strange, most kids would save their cat… Next, however, I would get my backpack/my purse (depends on what you call it). That has inside of it everything I could possibly ever want to save: My camera, my cellphone, my iPod, my books, my notebook, my flashdrive, etc. I would really really want to take my laptop… I’m not sure if that’s practical at all though. And I’d want my book of shadows, sort of like a journal but for Wicca. My books in general would be really important to me in a fire, I think. I’d want to save them too, but there’s SO MANY!!!

Hopefully my mom and the rest of my family would get out on their own, because I’m feeling a bit materialistic right now.

That’s pretty much everything in my room that has any real significance to me. Here’s the suprising thing: All that stuff is in my room at almost all times. My room IS, in most senses, my emotional connection. Everything in my room is basically magical to me, and very very personal and important. Anything I put in my room has a place and is connected and important to everything next to it. That’s the part I think is strange, because if I could take ANYTHING, anything at all, it would just be my entire bedroom…

Pepon Osorio

Pepon Osorio is a New York artist, originally from Puerto Rico. His artwork focuses mainly on an emotional level, an attachment that people have with the objects he uses. Often he works with his own tradition and culture to show an emotion or a message to his viewers. Often the art pieces are of a lighter nature, but with a serious political or social commentary buried beneath. They evolve from the interactions between people on a more day-to-day basis that usual for an artist.

My favorite piece that I found is called 100% Boricua. It is a mixture of New York and Puerto Rican culture and tradition. Behind these interesting items, like flags, souveniers and tourist attractions, which are placed on a wooden cabinet with lacy curtains, are written statistics on immigration to and from the US. They highlight the issues that immigrants face today and work to transform the entire piece.

Also what I like about it is that I think it has a very personal meaning to him. He is from Puerto Rico and has seen this move first hand and probably knows many others who have as well. I think that is very brave and personal, to create a work of art that is so completely a part of your life.

Creativity

K, here’s what I’d like to do:

• I really like the apple idea. I’d love to get some shadow on one side and some not shadow (Yes, that is the scientific term) on the other and then take a picture, or take a bite out of the apple, or cut it into quarters and put lemon juice on two and let the other two brown. All of those would make me really happy to photograph.
  
• One of my ideas is to put a vase of flowers next to a window and take pictures of them next to all that beautiful weather we’re having, but stuck inside. I think that would show some sort of mood really well. And then I could take some pictures of the flowers in a pretty room, or the flowers out in the sunlight being happy or something like that.
• Lastly, I’d really like to take a picture of a forest right around this time of year, except one at night in pitch darkness with some spooky lighting and the other in the middle of the day with birds in the trees and the sun shining and stuff like that… Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of forests directly around here, and I doubt I’ll be around one in the middle of the night any time soon… Maybe, though, because today after school I’m getting on a plane to go to Portland, Oregon for my older brother’s graduation! -yaay-

Halftone Effect 2 – All Alone

This happens to be my fairy godmother, Belynne. She’s one of the four women teaching me Wicca… Hence why the little halftoney things don’t look so much decerative as an insert to go wtih the picture, that’s on purpose, cuz she’s a witch, and it’s magic coming from her hands “Bippety Boppety BOO! “

Tutorial

Well, it was more complicated than necessary to figure out how to post this onto wordpress… They changed everything… But, the tutorial was uber easy, and, in my opinon, a very nice change from the usual. I like this picture more without either the halftone effect, or else without the flower, but that’s okay. It’s my desktop background at home.

Edward Tufte

Hmm… well, basically… Basically it seems like Edward Tufte’s main theme is simplifying data. He wants the information to speak for itself and the theme to sort of be timeless. He believes that if you show the information the right way then it sort of speaks for itself.

He really really really doesn’t like Powerpoint… Here’s what’s wrong with it:

• Speaks in bullets
• Shows information in fragments rather than sentences
• More designed for comfort of the presenter than for the audience or the data

And then there’s that cartoon of Stalin and his Powerpoint presentation, “Next slide, please.” (which I love)

Animation

Well…. It’s not moving on here at the moment… but maybe it will once I post this blog…

I like the whole animation thing, although it annoys me at times.

Kayla is seriously the most crazy perfectionist ever on this project and if she dies working on it because she forgets to eat or sleep, I blame you.

Hehe, just kidding.

(Update: I was just trying to figure out how to make it move and it turns out that it works if you click on it…)

Waking Life

I really liked the scene where the entire background was moving behind the guy walking along the train station. I think that they create that movement by moving not just the characters themselves but their environment around a lot. Also they are consistantly changing the camera angle, which is interesting.

I think they did it to sort of make the scenes and plot stand out a lot more from the rest of the movie industry. It’s not a kid’s movie, but it’s in cartoon form, kind of like Persepolis, the movie about the girl growing up in Iran, which is a really deep and mature film. Also it probably had some purpose as far as creating the right scenery and keeping the audience interested.