Altared Book

I have been working on this assignment literally since I was first introduced to it at the beginning of the Spring 2015 semester  Here is the final results of all of my hard work, time, and effort.  The book itself is an overall compilation of class projects; side projects; favorite images, quotes, and ideas; and is hugely a representation of the individual through multiple perspectives.

The Surprise....

I went ahead and actually altered a book.  In the begining of the semester I argued that I did not want to do an altered book on an actual book, because I didn't think it would be wise with books on the verge of becoming obsolete.  I had a conversation with someone that pissed me off bad enough for me to decide to go ahead and destroy a book for the altered book assignment.  The conversation was with a lady, who despite the fact that she can speak English always forces people to speak Spanish to her.  I am the kind of person who loves learning new languages and becoming involved in cultures outside of my own.  The thing that bothered me about this conversation is the fact that the lady tries to force her culture on others without showing any interest in their culture.  The book that I destroyed for his was a translation book from Spanish to English and English to Spanish.  The inside portion of both the front and back covers are decorated with the shredded pages of the translation book.

The Front & Back Covers...

I wanted to keep the back cover simple to represent my more relaxed side and I put a bunch of different things on the front cover to represent the chaos that is life.   The tree on the cover page is a representation of the constant growing and learning we do in our lives.  I made the tree out of a brown paper bag and dried rose petals to give it more of a natural feel.   The rest of the cover page is some of my favorite quotes, words, and images. The back cover only has two quotes, a handmade flower (made out of two different kinds of studs), and a vinyl sticker of a phoenix with my name.  The phoenix is meant to represent the overcoming of different goals and growth. 

16 pages total

Class Take Away 14

I was upset about the various disruptions during the discussions of our fear assignment.  I felt like we did not have the chance to fully convey our fear projects and what they meant for each of us. From my perspective, the point of doing the fear project is to get in touch with or face things we would not normally want to face and hopefully open us up to new ceative avenues.  There seemed to be an almost papable feeling of discomfort through both days of the fear assignments for everybody.  It was almost like the room had become one conscience at some points, as if everyone in the room was in those feelings and moments with the person telling their story.  Kyle did a really great job dedicating himself to his fear project.  It seemed like many of the students really struggled with similar things and they could all in some small way relate to one another.  Overall, I liked doing the assignment, but I did not like certain parts of the discussion portion of the assignment. The themes of everyone's fear seemed to manifest as one thing but turned out to be related to a much deeper bigger fear.  This fear project has in a way opened our eyes to what our fears really are and how we can somewhat deal with these fears when we are confronted by them.

I am excited about how my altared book is turning out.  I almost have the whole thing completed and put together.  I originally used green, pink, and light green on the cover to give the cover a more down to earth feel, and  I used silver spray paint to represent the double meaning of my name on the back cover of the book.  These two covers are also meant to represent the various roles we assume in life.  I have a secret within my altared book, that I think will be interesting. I covered the front part with quotes, a fairy picture, butterfly, paper tree, and green ceramic tiles.  The silver back cover has an orange phoenix, my name, and silver ceramic tiles.  I filled the inside pages with all the different projects I worked on throughout the semester.

World Spinning Out of Control

                                                              LACK OF CONTROL 

Examine what makes YOU fearful. Really give this some critical thought. When you have identified a fear you want to examine, determine which of the categories best fits and discuss why you believe it is one and not the other. 

1. Is the fear you identified for this project a fear, phobia, anxiety, or worry?                                                     I believe lack of control qualifies as both anxiety and worry.  Its more of a worry than an anxiety, but it still qualifies somewhat as both.  Anytime I plan something, but little things start to go wrong I start to worry.  When I was a kid I could never protect myself from those who wanted to hurt me.  I would constantly worry back then of situations that would come about and I could not control them.  I cannot gurantee another persons word, because all I have is their word and that used to be enough.  However, most people I meet today will give their word without followthrough.  I cannot control another person's behavior, so these circumstances make it hard to trust other people as a general whole.    
2. In what ways do you notice fear in your life?                                                                                               i am often confronted with situations that I have very little power to do anything in.  I do a job that requires me to confront people if they are doing bad things, but I am not allowed to carry any weapons for protection if one of those situations goes wrong.  In certain situatons 
3. What does fear keep you from experiencing?                                                                                             I am very guarded when I talk to people, so its hard for people to get to know me.  I rarely go out with people my age, because I don't want to end up in a bad situation I can't handle.
4. What is the use of fear in your life? I don''t view fear as something that should hinder you.  I believe we should get in touch with the things that cause us to feel feelings that resemble fear, anxiety, worry, or phobias.  If we can get in touch with the things that cause these feelings to stir within, we can get in better touch with who we are as people and what we want to define us as individuals. It's hard to explain, but I think its much healthier to let go of things and not worry about the things that are out of our hands.  Not having complete control over the circumstances in my life is scary as hell, but it is not something i want to let control my decisions.  Its hard for me to talk to people and to participate in certain situations, but if I let that stop me I would not have got the chance to see England and meet all the new people I met while I was there.
5. How does fear affect your life, especially in terms of creativity?                                                                   I really try not to let it hold me back, but I would say the biggest way it impacts me creatively is by holding me back from sharing my ideas with others.  I push past my worries to continue trying new things, but sometimes it can be difficult to push past.  Sometimes, I have to shut my mind off and just let go of all the worries.
6. What form does your fear take?                                                                                                               It takes the form of distrust in/towards others, because people tend to be unpredictable in their behavior.  It will sometimes take the form of unnecessary worry in situations where small things seem to make the big picture fall apart.
7. How does making a creative project about your fear impact how you view it?                                                  It reminds me, no matter what I want to keep living life to its fullest and I can't do that if I let worry or fear hold me back.  I want to try new things, travel to new places, and meet new people everyday.  I can't do that if I let my worry/anxiety hold me back.

This Is Bliss...

For this exercise we are supposed to spend our time reserved for class doing something that brings us happiness.  Afterwards we talk about how our fear interacts with our creative space.

Does your creative zone have to be physical?

I don't think my creative zone has to be physical.  I prefer that it is something physical or tangible, but for the most part I usually play out different ideas in my head before I attempt to bring them into a physical realm.

Before going into the bliss assignment I had to come up with some ideas for the upcoming fear assignment. This is what I have come up with so far... I am afraid of falling from tall heights but that does not ever stop me from pursuing the top.  I am afraid of spiders, but I always catch them with my bare hands and release them back outside.  That sums up the small things that I am "afraid" of.  I only write afraid like that, because I feel like if it where something that was truly scary some part of myself would hesitate, but I don't.  The fears I have that make me hesitate are more like anxieties that occur for me when I feel like I am presented with the threat of it.  Failure that feels like a lack of control is something that gives me anxiety.  Sexual abuse or being targeted for some form of sexual abuse is something else that gives me anxiety.  I don't think I can focus on my anxiety over sexual abuse without breaking something inside of myself.  However, I can talk about my anxieties related to failure and a lack of control without totally loosing myself.

Obstacles related to Fear/Anxiety:

1. It is hard to come up with ideas, because there is not much in this world that I am afraid of and I have been taught my whole life to confront the things that make me react with some semblance of fear..

2. The only real things that make me feel something close to fear, is not really "fear" but more of an anxiety.

3. I am having trouble coming up with a school appropriate way to depict my "fear".  

4. I don't have the materials I need for any of the ideas I come up with.

5. I don't experience certain things, because I choose not to experience them for my own personal well being.

       -Even though this keeps me generally safe, it can hold me back in some situations.

What if question:

     1. What if I confront all of the above mentioned fears/anxieties through different forms of art and see which              ones I struggle with most.

             - Example: climbing to the top of a tall building and taking pictures of the Indianapolis                                          skyline or sculpting a spider.

     2. What if I use stuff from around my house to supplement the missing supplies I would need?

             - Example: nail polish instead of paint

     3.What if I open myself to new possibilities? 

After Thoughts-

The more I thought about the fear assignment during the bliss exercise, I began to realize how much anxiety I associated with lack of control in certain situations.  In every bad situation I have ever been in the thing I always struggled with most was the lack of control I felt in those situations.  Not even just lack of control, but like that lack of control was equivalent to weakness or being weak.     

Class Take Away 11

Ironically, the assignment for next week is to not come to class and spend that three hour block doing whatever it is that makes us happy.  I only say it is ironic, because I somewhat followed my bliss for the class prior to this one and ended up creating a mushroom house in Minecraft.  For this out of class assignment  I am going to have to come up with a new idea, but this time I think I want to take it outdoors.   During this time of class outside of class, we are supposed to be thinking about our fear project.  The fear project will be tough for me too.  I have to make something tangible to represent a fear that I have.  This is tough, because I was raised to believe that all fears should be faced head on  and I believe that when we worry about things we just end up generating unnecessary fear within ourselves about things that are usually not within our control.  I am afraid of things, but I don't let myself be ruled by these fears.  I get anxiety with heights, but I would still climb the highest mountain or the tallest tower just to see what is at the top.  I worry about the future, but I live in the now.  The only part of myself that even hesitates in the face of fear is a part of myself, that I am not sure I want or am ready to confront.  With that being said, I will have to seriously consider how I can approach this project without breaking myself.  This fear is one that I try not to confront very often. I have some ideas in mind on ways to make the fear tangible and so far I have been successful in facing my fears.  I think the best thing for facing any fear is to just own that fear and take control of it, instead of becoming consumed by it and letting it control your life.

Class Take Away 10

I had a really bad day on this particular class day.  I didn't make it to class and I almost didn't even get my most recent projects turned in on time.  My car seems to want to have major malfunctions every couple of weeks here lately.  I work full-time and go to school full-time.  I am doing projects at work and at school.  All projects have some sort of deadline attached to them.  I have definitely hit burn out mode.  My car decided to break down again as I was headed to the Seeing Sideways class on Monday.  With no ride to class I took the time to go out and just look at nature, which ironically helped give me some new character ideas.  I really just wanted my brain to focus on anything other than current projects or new project ideas.  It occurred to me that I really just needed to take a little break for myself, but I know that at the end of the day I love creating new projects and ideas.  I made a mushroom, lapis azuli, and glow stone house with lava water fountains to release some of my built up creative energy.  The glow stone was not easy to attainI did not want to focus on a school or work project, so I just did a random project in Minecraft.

Double Take: Media-Go-Round

The idea here is to take a personal creation from a non-digital plarform, editing it on a digital platform, printining it out, and editing the creation again on a non-digital platform.

For this I did a sketch/coloring of a dragon...

and a spin-wheel painting with neon glow paint.

I took photos of the two images and uploaded them into Photoshop.  In Photoshop, I primarily used filters to edit these images, to see how it would change the backgrounds of the images themselves. 

 For the dragon, I used glowing edges, bas relief, and plastic wrap filters.

For the other crazy guitar looking one I used the accented edges, graphic pen, and glowing edges filter.  I transformed it a little to the right to make the middle line look more symmetrical. 

I printed the images once I was done editing them in Photoshop.  The image that looked almost like a guitar, I actually did turn into a little guitar with markers and colored pens.  For the dragon, I added a new color scheme to go with the leathery look of the Photoshop image.

Class Take Away 9

This one is not exactly about class.  I mean it is somewhat related, but a little off topic.  In class we had to create something using paper that represented the new food we tried.  I ate snail for this project.  I made a tree with the paper, because I could not think of a better way to explain snail other than earthy or like the sensations on your senses when you are in a forest.  Ironically, during the time I was coming up with ideas for the snail I ended up coming up with a cool painting for my pixel art characters.      
                                   
I just finished the painting itself today, but I am still working on getting the tiles glued down.  The painting is of a cave entrance with a waterway at the entrance.  The taste of the snail actually inspired the colors in the painting.  I thought it turned out pretty great and I love how my thoughts on the taste of snail helped me shape the painting itself.

While I was painting, I took some time to start on making different colored covers for the altared book.  I came up with two covers that I really liked, one is plain silver to represent my name meaning and the other is the start of a chaotic mash-up cover page with dark/neon green, pink, and silver overlay.  I took some pictures of these two, but the pictures don't quite do the end product justice.  I am starting to get excited about how the whole thing is starting to come together.

Believe it or not this thing is much darker in person, but it still has that awesome looking tie dye effect going on.  The cover is more of a sea foam green with neon green, neon pink, and silver over the top.  I cut out a square in this page, because I am going  to use the square as a foundation for a    3-D tree coming out of the cover.

Right now the back cover page is just plain silver.  I plan on adding more to the back cover page, but I wanted the finished result to be a surprise.  I am sure the end result of these pages will not be exactly as I imagine them now, but I can't wait to see how they transform.

The Flavor of Escargot Sounds Like Forest

For this project, I was supposed to try a food that I have never tried before and explain how that food tastes through sound.  The food item I decided to try was escargot prepared by the head chef at Ivy Tech.  I believe it is important to try new things, because they open up whole new realms of possibility for an individual.  However, snail was not on the top of my list of new things to try.  It ended up tasting pretty good, just different from what I am used to eating.  The initial burst of flavor I got was garlic, but after that first taste of garlic it started to taste earthy.  It was very similar to eating a mushroom, except the it had more of an earthy/forest taste to it.  I know this sounds crazy, but it is almost like a mixture of dirt, leaves, air, and water.  Eating snail is like standing in a forest just breathing in the air.  It's hard to capture into words.  I probably won't ever be eating snail again. but it was an interesting and valuable experience in  my opinion.

The recording above was taken at West Side Park in Greenwood by the creek bed.  I wanted the sounds to represent the flavors I tasted in the snail; like dirt, water, air, and leaves.  The crunching noise in the background is where I picked up leaves and crushed them in my hands,  the water sound is from the movement of the creek, and I caught little bits of the wind picking up.

Class Take Away 8

I can relate to what Kennedy had to say about video games. Video games do make for a good escape from reality, they can bring people together, and they give people something to enjoy while passing the time.  I think games in general bring these moments out in life.  I think that playing/creating games gives us the power to transform not only how we look at the world, but it actually changes the world around us.  This in itself is a good reason to get out there and design new games.

I had a space out moment during class, but I could still hear my classmates talking about their different ideas for their cover pages and how those ideas related to who they are as a person.  This got me to thinking about myself and who I am as a person.  In my day to day life I maintain the illusion of structure and organization, because that's usually what is expected of me.  On the inside, this always make me feel like I am swimming in a pool of chaos.  Ironically, I come from a pretty chaotic background and I eventually learned not only to thrive, but to succeed in the midst of chaos.  I decided to represent myself on the cover page of my scrapbook in a chaotically structured way.  I know that I want to spray paint the back cover in silver, maybe make it a half and half with another color to represent the dualities that we often see in our lives.  I want to use pictures and quotes from authors I like.  I am going to shred up some of the class projects I've done and make some sort of design with them. I was also considering the use quotes from my fellow classmates, because this is supposed to be a collective journey that we are on together.

Altared Book Cover Page

For this blog I will be talking about potential ideas for what I can do with my Altared book cover page...

1)  I could cut up images and quotes from books and concepts I like.  The cover will have these images and writings put on the front of the scrapbook.

2)  I could shred up different projects I have done for the class and use them to create an image on the front cover of my scrapbook.

3)  I could use different green markers to cover the page in my favorite color and then place ceramic tiles on top to make it pop, then I will add artwork to the very top portion.  This will turn the scrapbook into something I enjoy looking at.

Class Take Away 7

Why am I here?
Well no one can ever really give a direct certain response to that question.  Life is full of opportunities to learn and grow, so the person I am today won't be the person that I am ten years from now.  In class the Brigg Jung personality assessment was mentioned.  I first learned about this personality assessment when I was in high school and at the time my personality type was an ENFJ.  A couple of years later I did the assessment and it said my personality type was INFJ.  For the last class project I did the assessment again and it said my personality type was INTP.  The first time I did this personality assessment I did not understand that the personality type I had would not be the one I would always have.  Now I understand that not only must I continue to grow, but I should also actively seek new ways to become the best version of myself. I know that there are parts of me that will always remain the same, but there are also parts of me that are still changing and growing.  I definitely will not be the person I am today tomorrow, but I cannot tell you who I will become.

Why Do I Do MAS?
I said before that media arts and science was not my first choice. I was in a Digital Arts & Media program in Central Nine when I was in high school.  I spent a year and a half in that program, it helped me to grow artistically and individually.  Needless to say I found happiness in the work I created at Central Nine.  Ever since I can remember my dad has worked eighty hours a week to support his family and he always looked miserable, this made me decide that no matter what I wanted to do a job that brought me happiness and satisfaction.  I believe that for me media arts and science is a way to find happiness in the work I do.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here?

     In class we did these blind contour drawings of a partner.  After we completed a timed session of the drawings, we gave the pictures to the person we where drawing.  Now we are supposed to come up with something that represents us to answer the questions, "who am I" and "why am I here", based on what we got about ourselves from the drawings we received from our partners.  Personally, I think it's hard to attain any real information about myself from a blind drawing of myself that's been generalized to fit someone else's perception.  For this particular project, I wanted to focus on both general and personal information about myself and why I am here.  I put together a little bag of different things that are meant to represent some aspect of who I am and/or why I am here.  My name is Arianna, which means silver and holy one, depending on the culture an individual is in.  I personally like the meaning of silver more than holy one, because holy one seems impossible to live up to and silver is a very lovely color.  I chose to represent my name with a silver gel pen and for the holy one aspect of my name I used a painting of the goddess Aphrodite, because I am not religious person.  My favorite color is green. I represented my favorite color with some green ceramic tiles and a green gel pen.  I put pennies and dimes in the bag to represent my financial growth.   I love to read and write.  I chose to represent this aspect of myself with the author and book that started it all, In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater Rhodes.  I come from a poor family, but I work hard and have the money to show for it now.  I started out at Ivy Tech Community College, because it was the only school I could afford and they offer a great curriculum.  I had trouble parting with Ivy Tech, so now I work there as a public safety officer.  I represented my close ties to Ivy Tech with a picture of their logo, that I received on an academic achievement award.  I am a bit of an overachiever and I chose to represent this aspect of myself with a StrengthsQuest top 5 strengths quiz.  I was not the least bit surprised to find out that my top five strengths are strategic, commanding, input, individualization, and context.  I am good at taking charge in any situation,  I like taking in other peoples ideas and assessing them compared to my own, I see people for who they are as opposed to who they want you to think they are, and I reflect on the past to find better solutions for the future.  The last thing I put in the bag are two pictures of works I did during this semester with the help of my Seeing Sideways class.  This class has inspired me to be creative in ways I never thought possible and helped me to achieve some of my best work since coming to IUPUI.  I wanted to show this work as a representation for what I will during my time at IUPUI, but also how the creative innovations will continue long after I have settled into a career.

 The picture to the left is an 80's pixel character that I created recently.

The picture below is a photo I took of the gem stone at IUPUI. This photo is special because it inspired a short story and storyboard called Serenity and the Crystal of Destiny. 

 

Who Am I?

I am Arianna. My name means holy one and silver. I love the color green and its many shades.  I am an overachiever.  I am good at taking charge, thinking strategically, accepting input from others, seeing people for who they are, and looking to the past to make a better future.  I am extremely strong willed and stubborn. I love to read and write.  I started college off at Ivy Tech Community College, graduated last May, and transferred with my Associates degree to IUPUI.  I actually wanted to go to IU Bloomington, but IUPUI is closer and cheaper, aka the more reasonable choice.  I love my area of study, Media Arts and Science with a focus in Game Development.

Why Am Here?

I initially wanted to get my degree in Criminal Justice, so that I could become a criminal analyst.  In order to be a criminal analyst an individual is required to obtain top level government security clearance and I could not do this because my father constitutes as a foreign national.  Without the ability to pursue the career I wanted I decide to pursue the next best thing for me, which is Media Arts and Science.  I naturally have an innovative personality, so this field is a perfect fit for me.  I come from a poor family, so I am using my time in college to get a degree and save back money for the future.  I don't want my future family to suffer the way that my parents and siblings did, simply because we where too poor.  I am here to build a better life for myself and the people I love. 

Class Take Away 6

     In class we talked about our projects involved with "bible dipping" and we explored our fears associated with this project, along with the in class assignment of blind drawing a partner.  One thing I noticed is that when the class talked about the "bible dipping" project and their word re-use, either they did not understand what context to interpret the word in or they were not comfortable with their own personal interpretation of the word re-use.  This was interesting to me, because like my classmates I had a similar problem with my word treason.  This class session served as a good reminder that language and word usage can be active, therefore words can be interpreted or even re-interpreted as a way to understand these words through each individual mindset.  With that reminder I was able to do something fun and creative with my word treason, because I kept interpreting the word itself until it turned into something I could understand and relate too.
     I liked some of the ideas presented in class.  For example, re-using old dreams to something creative and new was a great idea.  I had heard of a word cloud before class, but the way he turned the world cloud into his favorite movie script was pretty clever. He wrote out all of the words in the script and based their size on what words where repeated most often in the script.
    We talked about our fears too.  My personal fear of failure to myself was what I talked about.  I always have high expectations of myself, so when we did an assignment that I knew was impossible to succeed at my fear increased.  The others became more successful when they acknowledged that they could not be successful and their expectations of their work dropped, but mine did not because of my fear of not succeeding in my endeavors to create something good/worthy of the expectations I set for myself. Other people began to explore their fears in these projects and life, after I had the courage to express my fear of failing my own high expectations.  Some where worried about others projects being more creative and better than the projects they come up with.  Some where afraid of failing in the general sense of failing.  Some where afraid of upsetting others with their failures.  Many of us could relate to the feelings of being overwhelmed, making deadlines, letting others down with failed works, failing ourselves personally, and inadequacy.  Some where afraid of being alone forever, while others in the class where afraid they would never get time alone again.  It was helpful to see that others are going through the same things that the rest of us are going through, because it reminds us that we are not alone, whether we achieve or fail.   

Red Book "Bible Dipping"

For this assignment, I was supposed to determine a word from a red book, page forty-two, third paragraph, tenth word and once the word is determined I have to create something that represents this word.  The only red book I happen to own is The Beefeater's Grisly Guide to The Tower of London and the word that this led to was "of".  This word was not going to work for this assignment, but their where two words beside of that would make great selections.  One was guilty and the other was treason.  I think that both can be in a sense related to the beheading axe I decided to create, but the word I chose to go with was treason.  I chose to represent treason with a beheading axe, because the section of the book the word is in is about Anne Boleyn and her supposed treason against Henry VIII.  For this treason, Anne Boleyn was beheaded and this is why I chose to create a beheading axe to correlate with the word treason.

Class Take Away 5

I didn't get a chance to go to class this last Tuesday and I almost forgot to do this class take away.  I really like all of the projects that we have done so far and the journey this class is taking us on.  The project based on breaking the rules in our major focus was good for me.  Almost everything I do in my life is structure based, so sometimes I need to be reminded to loosen up and relax a little bit. This project was perfect for doing just that.  I think that it is possible for the project to end up on either spectrum of a good or bad project, but it gives you a chance to let loose with your creative side and get in touch with a younger child version of yourself.  Its great for the imagination to be able to tap into the child that lives inside every adults heart.  It gives a person the chance to just sit back and enjoy their creations.

Breaking Photoshop Rules

In Photoshop you are not supposed to upscale an image, free transform an image, or use multiple filter types.  I did all three in this image.  The upscaling of this image made it look pretty bad and distorted at first.  After I upscaled the image, I tried free transforming it a couple of times until I got an angle on the image that I liked.  Once I had the image at the angle I wanted, I used two different filters (glowing edges & colored pencil) and I used a blend mode (pin light), to make it turn into this wonderful image of rainbow puke.  This is not how I expected the image to turn out, but I like the fact that it ended up looking like a painting of a My Little Pony or Care Bear puke fest. The original photo was of a sliced rainbow cake, that got turned into a rainbow sketch with outlines of the original image.  I am going to keep playing around with the concept of breaking the rules and see where it will take me on my creative journey.

Class Take Away 4

We talked about our 50 What If questions for the altared book and it was crazy hearing various ideas so similar to my own.  I think the idea of turning a book into a pendant sounds pretty awesome.  I definitely considered the options of burning, transforming it into something new, cutting out the center to put something inside, burying it, and beating the hell out of it.  However, I am pretty excited about turning my works into a masquerade mask after I finish the scrapbook portion of my altared book.  I can't guarantee that I will stick with the masquerade mask idea, but right now it seems like it would be a good representation of the way my life is always switching from one role to another.  For the scrapbook portion of the altared book, I think it would be good to cut up the bindings to represent freedom from such a rigid rule bound life, I am not sure how great the scrapbook will look after that, but it would definitely feel good in spirit.


The concept that we have become desensitized to violence, in general and through media, was brought up in class. This concept deeply bothers me.  Many different scientific and medical studies were done on the effects of media in correlation with violence.  Consistently these studies found, that unless a person was already predisposed with violent tendencies, then they would not become violent just from viewing violence through media. I understand that it is possible for a child not to understand violence as wrong and may try to act out the violence they see, but then it is up to the guardians of that child to ensure that the child understands the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.  I don't think that humans can become desensitized to something so innately a part of their nature. I think that because we live in America we are blessed not to be confronted with the brutalities happening in the world around us, but we are also blinded in the sense that we forget how bad it can truly be out in the world because we are so sheltered from it.

Altared Book: Ideas

By the end of this semester we have to create an altared book.  Altared, in the sense that this book will be an altar to our creative journeys during our time in Seeing Sideways.  It is also altered in the sense that we will be taking a book about something we hate or that represents something we hate and turning that book into something we love.  The point of this particular blog, is to come up with fifty “what if I did this to my book” scenarios and eventually using these scenarios as guidelines for our finished altared books.  Here is goes…

What If I???

1.       Use a scrapbook instead of a book

a.       Books are eventually going to become obsolete in the face of technological advancement and I can’t destroy one, but I hate scrapbooking and this could be a good opportunity to try something creatively different for myself.

2.       Put newspaper over scrapbook (Hides the fact that it’s a scrapbook)

3.       Put favorite quotes on front & back covers

4.       Cover the front with images of books I like (Makes it more like something I love)

5.       Cover it in images of my creative journey in Seeing Sideways

6.       I burned it (Freeing)

7.       Turned it into a box

8.       Cut it up into tiny pieces (Freeing in a different way)

9.       Turned the scrapbook into a digital file with playback of my blogs

10.   Hollowed out scrapbook to make a picture display of favorite works in Seeing Sideways

11.   Turned it into a mini safe vault of creative works

12.   Hollowed out with cover still intact to create the semblance of a moving image

13.    Transform the whole thing into a one page giant collage

14.   Transform it into a lampshade of works (only using bulbs with 10-15 watts)

15.   Transform it into a purse of works (Can store tokens of class)

16.   Transform scrapbook into a flower or wreath

17.   Transform scrapbook into a clock (I have issues with time perceptions, so it’s a good representation of my personality)

18.   Cut up scrapbook and make into a necklace

19.   Cut up scrapbook and make into a bracelet

20.   Cut up scrapbook pieces and turn it into a tiny town

21.   Throw paint at it/on it

22.   I rub it with sand

23.   Decorate it with little crystals

24.   Decorate it with water color paints

25.   Decorate it with ribbons

26.   Cover it with stickers from things I enjoy

27.   Cover the scrapbook in bark

28.   Cover scrapbook with images of games I love

29.   Turned scrapbook into a game board

30.    Turned it into a map of work (Shows growth)

31.   Turned scrapbook into a scroll (represents wisdom)

32.   Turned it into a sculpture of a tree (represents wisdom/growing)

33.   Turned scrapbook into a sculpture of an owl (represents wisdom/growing)

34.   Bury it in a time capsule (When finished of course)

35.   Seal it with concrete

36.   Sew it shut

37.   Make doodles & highlights all over scrapbook

38.   Ran over the scrapbook (Hopefully leave some tire impressions or would be somewhat pointless creatively)

39.   Write code on Scrapbook back cover

40.   Fill inside of scrapbook with finished projects

41.   Create a slot/bag in scrapbook for class tomes (Good reminder of creative journey)

42.   Leave the scrapbook whole, but cut out the center of the cover to place a paper sculpture in

43.   Use glitter glue to decorate scrapbook

44.   Cut paper into crazy shapes before placing it into the scrapbook

45.   Color the scrapbook with metallic markers

46.   Color the scrapbook with glitter markers

47.   Filled the scrapbook with different page designs

48.   Give the scrapbook a chameleon style look (Representation of putting on different faces for different places or situations)

49.   Color every page by hand

50.   Covered it in photos of my world perception

Class Take Away 3

I think one of the hardest parts of being a college student is the fact that you have all of these responsibilities outside of being a college student.  It's very easy to get caught up in the responsibilities and just go through the motions, like we talked about in class.  The more I thought about the more I realized tons of people everyday just go through the motions instead of experiencing things they enjoyed.  Keep in mind, I work at a college where I get to meet people everyday doing the things they love, but they get so caught up just living everyday life and they forget to stop and enjoy what they love about the things they do.  I wish I knew a way to help remind these people that even though it can get tough, it's okay, because they are doing what they love and that in itself will pay off one day.

On the doodle project...
The doodle project was somewhat frustrating in the beginning, because I started out with a blank page.  It never really occurred to me to use a page with notes already on it.  I did not doodle much before this project, but next time I decide to doodle I will use a page already covered in notes.