A written discussion of development to date:
I am an erratic creative. There is no one way I want to make art. I want the freedom to make any kind of art, at any time, and that is the freedom that the New Media program has offered me access to over the last two years. I have taken classes on digital photography, digital design, video art, and sound art, and each class has helped me be more free to express myself.
My digital photography class didn’t just teach me the basics of photography like the rule of thirds, it taught me to look at the world as a photographer. The world simply exists on its own, but by looking at it from each of our own, unique perspectives, and capturing that perspective in an image, we can turn the world around us into art. I remember at the beginning of the class, I was just so excited to have a camera. I took hundreds of photos, often very repetitive and mostly from the same spot in the quad where I enjoyed hanging out at the time. I found myself in the habit of always shooting photos from the same place of the same things, so I decided to shift my approach drastically. Luckily, this was the point in the course where we had an assignment on creating abstract photographs. The ideas I came up with for that assignment ended up being the inspiration for my final project for the course, which is shown in my portfolio. Since then, abstract photography has been a personal passion of mine. There is something so intriguing to me about an image being a representation of something real while simultaneously being completely unrecognizable. In fact, a lot of my Instagram page is made up of abstract photographs taken and edited by me.
Video art was probably the most creatively satisfying class I have ever taken. It is truly the format that I want to work with throughout the rest of my life. I have been a comedian, performing live stand-up and improvisational comedy from the ages of 11 to 16 (when the pandemic shut everything down). I felt so unsatisfied with live performance as a medium. Video art made me excited about comedy again. Being able to curate a vibe using visuals, especially audio, and then breaking that tension with something goofy or a perfectly timed sound bite is so electrifying. Recently, I have been struggling a lot with my mental health and one of the biggest ways I have gotten through it is by using art therapy. Having the ability to make a small comedic video or a horrifyingly scary one feels freeing and feeds my soul.
My design principles class made me feel productive. In the back of my mind for a long time I always felt like training to be an artist or being an artist is a privilege that we can afford because of the hard work that everybody else does. Other people do “real work” so people like me can just make art and the world still turns. In design principles, I realize the utility and functionality of art. Making something visually pleasing is about more than it just being nice to look at. It can be the difference between the right person’s attention being grasped by the right public announcement or posting. Especially in the evolving landscape of new media, digital design, especially for advertisements, logos, and advocacy campaigns, is a trade. A skill that will forever have inherent value. This is inspiring to me because it means that I don’t have to be a beloved artist or a well-known creative in order to positively affect the world in a meaningful way with my art. If I want to, I can spend my time helping get done what needs to get done.
Introduction to sound was an important experience for me because beforehand, I thought that I wanted to do music. I love music. It is one of my favorite forms of art. In fact, there’s no form of art that I have a deeper emotional connection to than music. When I was younger, I thought that I wanted to be a musician myself. When I took Introduction to Sound, I realized that my creative visions for audible art are valid, but not rhythmic enough to be considered music. The class opened my mind to the idea of audio art that is not necessarily music. This is a concept that I have taken with me throughout my time in the New Media Program, most notably, in my Video Art class. You can hear in some of the videos in my portfolio, recordings being edited into abstract noises and used to build and break tension. I think I would’ve used a lot more original audio from footage taken for my videos if it weren’t for my introduction to sound class. Because I was already comfortable with editing sound, I felt safer experimenting and moving sounds around the video, even repeating them to return to motifs and ideas from earlier on.
To me, new media means the freedom to express myself creatively with no limits in terms of form and medium. All my life, my mind has been racing with one idea after another idea after another idea, mostly impossible or inaccessible. My goal is to unlock the necessary abilities to bring these visions into reality.
A written proposal for academic study:
The more that I think about my future career and what I want to do for the rest of my life, I realize that I do not want my art to be my sole source of income. I’ve seen friends and role models become uninspired and no longer excited to make art once it has become their means of survival. My art is the most fulfilling thing in my life, besides my family, and I refuse to sacrifice the purity of that in the pursuit of money. That is why classes like Design Principles are so exciting to me. I feel like I am learning a useful skill that I can be paid well for, and it is still something I am interested in. I enjoy graphic design, but I do not feel like it is my creative outlet. What is so enthralling to me about the New Media department is that it will allow me to learn trades such as graphic design that I can be paid well for in addition to teaching me about the forms of art that I make for my own spiritual and emotional well-being. I hope to continue my work with graphic design as well as take courses in video, audio, and other forms of new media.
I had a hard time only picking four 3000-level courses for New Media. There are double that number that piqued my interest. However, among the most fascinating to me is Interactive and Experience Design. I have, for a long time, kept a running note on my phone of ideas for interactive museum exhibitions and pieces of performance art. As a child, a big part of what I would do on weekends or during school breaks was go to various museums and galleries with my family. The experience of physically going somewhere in order to consume art in a public place is magical to me, and all the more so when it is interactive. When I was in London this past summer, my best friend and I went to the Yoko Ono exhibit at the Tate Modern. It was one of the most exciting exhibits I’ve seen because it engaged the museum-goer so much. You are encouraged to hammer nails into walls and tie a strand of hair around them, draw on certain art pieces, and even immerse yourself in a black cloak, which can be seen out of, but not into. This made the experience a lot more playful and thought-provoking. Another course I plan on taking is cross-cultural video production. When I took Video Art I, I was consumed by my own vision and attempts to execute that vision. This class seems to offer a more collaborative approach, which will be a necessary experience for me as my concepts and projects become increasingly complex and involve more and more people. Material distribution piques my interest as well. I have been doing a lot of photo editing recreationally in the last couple of months, and I have been contemplating turning these visuals into either prints or incorporating them into clothing designs. This class will give me the opportunity to make prints on paper and on T-shirts, which is very exciting to me. I chose Video Art II because I do not feel as though I have learned all I need to about video art. I am thirsty for more. I also made a promise to my Video Art I professor to take Video Art II with her, and I plan on keeping that promise.
My idea for my senior project is something that I have been thinking about for a long time. I want to juxtapose the trends in rock music from the 1980s and the 1990s with the current trends in rap music from 2010 to the present in a research paper. In the '80s and in the '90s, rock music exploded in a million different directions, with the gentler, softer rock music becoming even gentler and even softer, and the hardest core rock music becoming even harder and harsher. We see a similar trend today in rap music. There is one sect of hip-hop that is almost purely focused on lyricism and the message of the artist. We see this represented by artists like Kendrick Lamar and Jay Z, especially in their most recent albums. On the other hand, we have the sect of rap music that has all but completely given up on meaningful lyricism and hyper-focused on the sound and vibe of the music. We see this represented best by artists like Playboi Carti and Yeat. It was just after the 80s and the 90s that rock ‘n’ roll went out of fashion, being replaced by hip-hop. It is my thesis that before a musical genre loses its dominance in the zeitgeist, it will flay open, shooting off extreme and polarizing subgenres such as Punk, Grunge, Death Metal, Drill Rap, Mumble Rap, and even Christian Hip Hop.