#myfinale

FINAL WORK - At a Glance

My final work is a digital image inspired by the previous assessment work Apples. Like its inspiration, At a Glance is based on ‘vagueness’.

While I had no idea on what to do, I knew I had originally wanted to stick with the video format of the previous experiment, thus many of my experiments involved filming random scenes and locations which were later used in my final work.  All my experiments explored the idea of ‘the lack of’ in regards to vagueness. For my first experiment, I explored the idea of randomness in regards to the unknown – that is, stringing bunch of words and images together that might not make any sense. My second experiment was based on a search for the unknown and how each way of recording had its effect on the work. The third/fourth experiment was sort of extension of the previous, instead of whole films; only small snippets were used to create the sense of the unknown. My fifth experiment occurred after a phone glitch, in which the screen was rendered unusable—this is what inspired my final work.

The work itself features every twelfth frame from previous works from the last assessment and from a video in each experiment. To do this, I used Photoshop to import each video and convert every twelfth frame into a layer. In each layer, I resized the frame to fit a small vertical space. The vertical lines create a very ‘glitchy’ vague look reminiscent of old TV green static screens. The result is a bar-code-esque picture that shows off the process of the work. The image was then transferred to my phone to create my own ‘screen of death’.

From cardboard box to digital sound file.

At the start, I had no idea of what to do; I was just trying to take photographs in different contexts before I tried actually physically changing the box.

One of my main ideas involved using fire and using the ashes as something else. I was inspired by the study of alchemy and chemistry. Using ashes from burnt boxes, I attempted to create something new from nothing but the ingredients that made up cardboard—ash and water. These experiments failed—the results were not what I expected.

My final experiment was inspired by a similar alchemical thought. A box does not have to be physical; you can make a box using code and software. Code is, at its heart, binary for machines. What had started off as a series of images slowly turned into sound. With the help of various online converters, binary is turned into Morse code.

Dot/Dash is the result of trying to mix alchemy with the digital age. It is a sound piece in Morse, with varying levels of pitch and distortion. However, it is made using the key ingredient of the box, binary. Using Adobe Audition, I was able to edit the sound files. In the end, a distorted sound was made.