Project #5: Word Made Flesh

I am very happy with how this project turned out. :) Just in case anyone was wondering.

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For Project #5 I decided to elaborate on some of the materials and discoveries garnered during my previous project (Project #4: 12.04.2008). I collaborated with my boyfriend, Ryan Dunkerley, in creating a message board with a keyboard overlay that attached specific images from Project #4 alphabetically by order of chronology to the keystrokes used to post on the board. In doing so, an entire language composed entirely of imagery is thus invented. It is interesting to note the various combinations of the photographs, too, for both their aesthetic and implied meanings.

As previously mentioned, in finishing up Project #4 some interesting feedback was received. Many of my participants seemed to respond strongly to the image collage of my day -- some responded in kind by sending me response photos to some of my image posts -- and I had numerous calls for more work with this theme. I decided to heed those suggestions and abandon my previously planned project. I was interested in working more with the imagery of the day and continuing on the dialogue, but perhaps allowing others to have more participation in cutting up and arranging the photographs which represented the storyline in question. I invited the collaboration of Ryan at this point because I wanted to branch out beyond what I had previously been focusing in my other projects this semester and thought a fresh set of perceptions and ideas would do a world of good. (I also noted many students in our class were pairing up and collaborating as well, so I wanted to follow suit for once instead of continually striking out alone...additionally, I wanted to test our collaborative capabilities...I admit it...)

Ryan listened to my desires for the imagery and suggested doing a keyboard overlay paired with a message board structure utilizing 26 of my images from the previous project (paired chronologically with the alphabet), which I was unsure of until I saw his demo version. I wanted participants to be able to portray full English or other language sentences in photographs (using transliteration systems with the roman alphabet, if need be -- it's all kind of the same once it reduces to images). I also wanted participants to be able to portray non-languages and visual compositions based on this alphabet of images. Basically, I wanted the meanings to be multiple - something that could or could not be deciphered to another language but could stand regardless on their own as a new means of communication and inter-relation. I wanted to play with the idea of the image as the end of the communicative process. I've been working lately with the idea of translation and the biblical story of the Tower of Babel (although I am not Christian), and was intrigued by the idea of creating a universal means of communication that was not meaning or language specific, but rather resided in moments and concurrent imagery.

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A variety of applications and programming languages were used to create the keyboard overlay, including but not limited to:

-PHP
-Flash
-AJAX

...and, of course, HTML.

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I was pleasantly surprised as to the collaborative aspect of this project. Ryan is more of the visual and big-picture person between the two of us, whereas my interests have always more linguistic and detail-oriented, so this is kind of a blending of our outlooks in what I think is a very harmonious fashion. Before we've each just consulted or occasionally assisted the other in our own separate projects, but we have never worked like this together before. No creative fights occurred, either...except slight disagreements over Ryan's preference for drum-and-bass versus my preference for trip-hop while working...which is great news for our media production company. :)

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Now...without further ado...

Project #5: Word Made Flesh

Project #5: A New Direction

After my completion of Project #4 last Thursday (waiting for the Blackberry was excruciating!), I received a surprising amount of positive feedback from friends and strangers alike. I actually had several queries regarding whether I planned to continue doing "A Day In The Life Of..." type events or whether this was to be a stand-alone experience. Friends had told friends about it, so I have had numerous friend requests on Facebook in the days since from these new interested parties.

It seemed to me that, in recording my thoughts/experiences/life in photos, that I was creating something of a new language and a new means of communication between myself and my friends. These photos served almost as miniature graphic poems/commentary of a moment captured in time. Surprisingly, some of thee images elicited similar artistic and communicative responses from friends -- several individuals have sent me personal photos through my private e-mail account in response to some of the images that I posted. In this way, photos have become almost another communicative means and language.

After thinking about this more over the past weekend, I decided to change my final project from a multimedia representation of my racial identity poem to explore this concept more fully. I figure that if so many people are requesting more, there must be something to this concept that warrants further exploration.

I think for this project I will probably end up collaborating with my boyfriend, Ryan Dunkerley, who is also a media artist and photographer (like myself). His focus areas are a bit different than mine, but this past fall we formed a joint production company in the hopes of releasing our works together (Narrow Escapes Media - the site has yet to be fully designed, however.) We also had our first joint art show during the Morgantown Arts Walk this past October and we found that our work goes well together...surprisingly. ;) We already joke that we spend too much time together and we've been wondering how we'll work together, so this is a trial run...our first collaborative exercise!

I'll be the one who plots the design, the project, the implementation and the parameters, although Ryan has suggested the media. We'll be working with my sources entirely. Ryan does server side programming in addition to working with many of the programs I do (and I absolutely do not know PHP - nor do I intend on learning it), so he's going to lend his constructing expertise to the project. I'm excited because I can move out and try some things I have never done. But we'll see how this ends up...hopefully not in 3:00 AM artistic squabbles around the Yule tree during Finals Week. ;)

Project #5: Last Class Blog/Planning Thoughts

I've spent most of the semester working with translation, remixing and shifting the words of others, without utilizing any of my own poetry or work, so for Project 5 I was considering doing a multiple input/media piece centered around a poem I wrote about biracial or multiracial identity.

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Skin Deep (A Poem For Lee)

when I was smaller and necessarily curious I would
take the books with me into the closed bathroom
leaning close to the mirror I would
look in my face for my unknown fathers then
look in the book and back to the mirror
trying to match cheekbones and nose to
Lakota or Cherokee or Seminole or Pueblo
none really seemed to match
though

nobody ever asks
I was once told that
my dark blood must run underneath my light blood
like they would be separate even in my veins

I usually say
Irish/Welsh/Belgian/German
sometimes though
I do say Native to which
I am always asked
"What tribe?" to which
I never have a satisfactory answer

what do I say, then?

I didn't grow up on the rez
my mother didn’t teach me to make
frybread (my recipe came from a cookbook)
I've never met him but
nonetheless
there it is all the same

sometimes a stranger will get real close and
declare while their breath closes up my pores
"You do not look Indian" like
they are revoking my existence with their words
these casual ethnographers
who somehow feel more able to read my
skin and bones than
I have been thus far with
twenty odd years of practice

and here I am
unable to answer the simple question
who was he? or
where did he come from?

I am not exoticizing or romanticizing this
I realize how these bloodlines came down
to me (adopted daughter of an adopted son)
most likely someone
unwilling someone
unhappy someone
stolen so
in the end
if there is one thing
I share with my father
it isn't my face
but the legacy
of being left behind

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I've been thinking about involving other people I know who come from multiracial and/or adopted backgrounds by having them act out a series of actions specific to skin, racial identity and stereotypical impressions of what each "race" looks or acts like...I plan to use photographs, video, audio, and other media inputs...but that's about all I have right now. Details forthcoming.

Project #5: Pre-Planning

No frikkin clue.

Blogosphere Blog

"It is common to speak of the 'blogosphere' or the collective space of all blogs and their interconnections. Time magazine named "user-generated content' (such as blogging) as the 2006 'person of the year.' Political and journalistic blogs supposedly influence the direction of policy and opinion. Do you read blogs? Why are blogs so important today? Why are people excited about them as a form of writing? Is there something new, different, and specific about blogs? Are blogs in any way more cooperative or democratic or open or participatory?"

Yes, I follow several blogs on a regular basis, as well as maintaining my own personal blog as well as two other blogs for various activities and organizations. I've also blogged for WVU and for my job. I feel they are a very convenient form of communication and information sharing...in many ways, blogs can be like an extended casual conversation that participants can enter and exit at will.

Additionally, blogging offers the opportunity to easily make a mixed media representation of thoughts, concerns and opinions - I regularly include links to online website and videos on Youtube, or photographs, which makes it a convenient catch-all for a variety of media sources. I feel blogging has really influenced the way I personally order information in my own life.