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.