In between Identities

While sitting in class today, I was kind of upset because my sister was leaving to California. I was happy for her because she is following her dreams and they are taking her to where she wants to be, but sad because I was gonna miss having her around. After saying goodbye to her, I rushed back to class and came in late, which was the first time for me. I was kind of zoned out at first thinking about my sister and the midterm I think I didn't do my best on, but I decided to focus in class to distract my mind. From what I took away today was when we were talking about Identities. What does it mean? Many people around the classrom said what was on their minds, but it wasn't what I was thinking of at all. This one girl named Taylor then said exactly what I was thinking and I completely agreed. Its about who you are, and what makes you, you. After thinking about it, I began to wonder who I am. I went from being osvaldo to ozzy, which i feel created an alternate persona of me. That is who I have been for the past few years. I usually hate telling people my real name because ever since I was young, no one could pronounce it right and it embarassed the shit out of me. One of my friends made up the nickname ozzy because she didn't know how to pronounce it and it stuck. Nowadays, it doesnt even feel right to call myself that. I don't know who I am, but who I want to be is Osvaldo Ayala, maybe change it to Ozvaldo so people can call still call me Oz or ozzy for short and it would make sense. Either way, I need to stop being the illusion I am and start being the person I want to become.

Hours of Bliss

Taking 3 hours to have fun before working on something is a marvel idea. It lets you have fun and enjoy what you like to do while thinking of what you need to as well. With the Idea of working on my altered book of the self, I had 3 hours of fun while thinking about that in the back of my head. I came up with these obsticles that stand between me and my Ideal altered book of the self.

1. I can't make it interesting.

• What if I tried to incorporate something meaningful that is universal to everyone?
• What if I wrapped the covers in video tape as an ode to a past assignment?
• What if I made it like a scrap book kind of?

2. I won't have time to do what I need to do to it.

• What if I take an hour of each day to work on this book?
• What if  I work on one page at a time?
• What if I put everything im going to put in the book in a pile so i had everything i needed when i went to work on it?

3. I can't damage the book.

• What if i managed to mangle the book?
• What if i cut up some parts of the book?
• What if i insert object into the book by cutting stuff out?

4. I can't make it interactive.

• What if I tried to put in some interactive objects into the book?
• What if the book interacted with me?
• What if i found a way to digitize a part of the book?

5. It will just look like any other book.

• What if I try to change it's outer appearance?
• What if i glue some pages together to make it different?
• What if I just put certain words on each page to express what I did that day in class?

After doing this assignment, I learned that more ideas and creativity come to you when you have had time to enjoy yourself and think.  The saying "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" is true for most of the zombie employees who work for boring companies that allow them to not have fun during work. If everyone had this rule executed in their workplace, we would all live in a better world.

Clouds n' Tunnel

For this take away, I could do whatever I want, so here is a short music video done to the song I Wanna Go by Summer Heart on the album About A Feeling. Hope you enjoy the scenery I shot that ranges from California To Indiana.

 

Sounds of Seitan

Our next assignment consisted of trying something new foodwise and somehow expressing how it made us feel using a non-dominant sense. I couldn't use taste because that was the dominant one in the situation. Being vegetarian, I dediced to try something at 3 Carrots in the City Market. I went with a friend and decided to try the seitan gyro. Seitan is made by rising away the starch in wheat and leaving a high protein gluten blend behind. Also called "wheat meat", "wheat gluten" or simply "gluten" Seitan become surprisingly similar to the look and texture of meat when cooked. Miaking it a popular meat substitute. Seitan is also high protein, making it a popular protein source for vegetarians. Upon taking my first bite, i started to center in on all my senses. My friend was talking to me, but I wasn't paying attention for some time as my mind zoned out as my senses zoned in. It felt like the outer world was replaced by static and my thought were the only ones barely audible throught it. I felt really odd because I had never done this before, plus the seitan was a weird texture. Maybe if it would have been crispier it would have been better. I did like the taste of it, but the texture was kind of rubbery, making it feel like I was eating an eraser. I finished the whole thing though. It was quite an experience. The video I made is supposed to give off an eerie vibe because it gives you the essense of being in my mind when I started thinking about how I was feeling. The Sound puts you in my mind as you experience how I felt when I ate the Seitan. Do you feel as Weird as I did?

Feel the Colors

Today in class we were asked to go outside and assign a color to an emotion we were feeling when we felt it with one of these 4 senses (touch, smell, hear, and see). This was really odd because I had never really thought about really feeling what it was like to be outside and to assign a color to what I felt. As we went outside, we all huddled near the trash cans out back as some guys called the people that didn't take the freight elevator idiots. I am kind of introverted so I didn't have much to say, so instead I started to try and figure out how I was feeling and looking through my box of 32 colored pencils trying to figure out what I was going to do. Feeling the air upon me which was being blown by the huge gray cloud that hovered over us, I began to feel cold, but the sky was still showing a bit and it was really blue. It was quite a sight. I decided to assign the color blue for my sense of sight and the emotion I felt was wonderlustful. I felt like I needed to travel and see more place. Then I snapped back into reality and continued on with the journey. After Hearing the wind blow through the trees, I decided to assign the color gray to it because of the clouds and they were the ones causing the wind. The emotion I felt was joyous because hearing the wind blow through the trees and plants made me really happy to be alive and enjoying the all the sounds nature has to offer. It made me want to explore various naturistic landscapes to get lost in their natural beauty. As everyone continued on the sidewalk, I stepped off and cut throught he grass and felt some nearby plants and flowers. They felt so soft and looked amazing. I felt like jumping in and rolling around in them because I'm crazy like that. That is why I assigned the emotion happy to it and after walking through the grass, decide to assing the color green to it. The last sense I had to use was smell, and after taking in a couple of whiffs of air, couldn't really smell anything because my sense of smell has been off a bit ever since an incident a while back. What I could only really smell was the dirt. I felt like it was right underneath my nose. I decided to apply the color brown because of that. The emotion I assigned to it was thoughtful because It made me think why I could only really smell somewhat pungent odors. Or was there something really wrong with me?

More and More and More and More

For this assignment, we had to do something using the word "more" that the teacher bible dipped from a book. An extra challenge was to use mirrors in some way. I had many ideas, but the hard part was being able to do them. At first, I thought about laying the mirrors down on the grass facing the sky, then putting the camera above the person so it could be a weird mix of the sky and grass. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that because I didn't have enough time to do that. Instead, I just decided to use mirrors to reflect the sunglight off of them while being in a nice fall background. After only having enough time to shoot a little, I ended up having only a bit of footage, but that didn't stop me from putting a creative touch to it. The following is the a mesh of effects and layers that I made, I made it to a song that has the word more in it and inserted pictures of money throughout. The message of the video is that money is something we can't get enough of, we spend our lives earning more and more so we can use it to buy things we need and want. Are we brainwashed by the green?

I also wanted to do something like this, but didn't have enought time so i chose to do the first video of course