Media Concepts- Media Scans

This was a mini-assignment for Media Practices-Concepts. Each student had to do a short presentation called a "Media Scan", presenting some aspect of media that was kind of cool, innovative, paradoxical or challenging in some thoughtful or emergent way. At the time that I was up, we were right in the middle of a slew of drawing assignments-so I decided to do a "scan" which consisted of a slideshow presentation of drawings and sketches from different artists throughout the ages-a little inspiration so to speak. Nuff said...

Photo Slideshow-"Mischievous"

This is the final Slideshow from "Four Approaches" called "Mischievous". It fell under the Discursive category-but was not shot to be such. Actually it's kind of forced and could have been great if I knew that I was doing it "when" I was doing it, if that makes any sense. It features my young cousins, Michael and Nicholas (who made me buy them banana splits in lieu of payment) and the score is from the brilliant Alan Hovhaness. Lights please!

Photo Slideshow-Arty / Intuitive

This was another mini-assignment from the "Slideshow-Four Approaches" assignment. I took it upon myself to combine the "Artsy/Designy" and "Intuitive" subgroups into one assignment (I figured-who would know?) . It's a reworking of some of the photos taken for the "Visitors" shoot. Kit Laybourne, the instructor, had alot of praise for this one (Kit , by the way, among numerous and sundry other accomplishments, was the former Creative Director at The Oxygen Network and author of the seminal "The Animation Book"-so true praise indeed...) The music, for anyone keeping score, is a rare b-side from the band Ultravox called "Dreams". Enjoy.

Photo Slideshow-"Visitors"

This is actually one part of an assignment-(once again Media Practices-Concepts) that actually involved four mini-projects. Here, the assisnment was to use a location as, in a sense, a "subject" and to portray that "subject" in four different approaches-Narrative, Discursive, Artsy/Designy and Intuitive using a series of photos. In my usual grandiosity, and being home on "spring break" with a surplus of time and energy-what initially started out as a "Photo Study" of my Aunt Louise and Uncle Ricky's farmland in the outskirts of Owego, N.Y. turned into this baroque atmospheric "ghost story" in the style of "Rural Gothic". It ultimately involved several different locations, including St. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Endicott, N.Y., props, characters and some Photoshop-ing. Entitled "Visitors"-the basic premise consisted of strange goings-on at a rural farmhouse that only the children were privy to (kind of within the whole "Children of the Corn". "The Other' and "Village of the Damned" school, but not quite). The grandfather "picks up" on it and decides to take, shall we say, remediative action...
I just wanted to put a special thanks here that I lazilly and typically left out of the final credits. Special Thanks (in no particular order) go to My Aunt Louise and Uncle Ricky Wasyln, their nephews (my cousins) Michael and Nicholas Wasyln, Peter Hovencamp, Father Stavros Lever, Gregory Harris, Boneless Beef and Alan Polyniak (who, believe it or not, had been the editor on the Troma classic film "The Toxic Avenger" and decided to come and bring his expertise out for one of the days.) Thanks all!!! (For the discerning, retro-80's music scholar- yes, that is the opening bars of the song "The Storm" by the superlative band Big Country.)

Makeovers and "Incriminating Evidence"

Once again some posts and assorted labors from Kit Laybourne's Media Concepts Class. Here we delve into the amazing bottomless levels and interactions between Illustrator and Photoshop. First off was an assigment entitled "Incriminating Evidence'-here the idea was to work with the compositing and blending elements of the software to create some funny or ironic (or just plain profound) juxtapositions and to start learning how to "cover one's tracks" so to speak. If you'll notice, I used the elements from my "still life" and worked them into a cityscape that stands right outside The Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater-where I had just finished viewing Guy Debord's rediscovered Situationist Film- "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni" for my Situationist Class (but will get back to that).

The other part of this particular assignment consisted of photo-makeovers. We were instructed to take a pre-existing photo of ourselves and "embellish' it in four different ways either to emphasize eith a design or sequential element. I decided to build a sequence in which my "environment" get increasingly ethereal and populated by
ghosts, mists, and what not. To quote the great Roky Erikson-"If you have ghosts than you have everything."



And then, my grandiosity got the best of me and I trekked over to the Met and was absolutely aghast when they said "C'mon in we just had a wall open up". Me lie?!

New Logo-See Above

If you notice at the top of the page, there's a new logo. Far from putting me into the ranks of guys like Neville Brody and David Carson, it is nonetheless, I think, pretty good. Once again part of an assignment for Media Practices Concepts-it was the product of my first foray into Adobe lllustrator (which, I might add, has a BEAR of a learning curve)-the logo actually uses the typeface that appears in my documentary work-in-progress "Juggernaut" and is a variation on the IBM corporate-logo typeface (IBM is a "corporate citizen' that plays a major, if not always flattering, role in the film). The surfaces are actually composed of a "swatch" that was pulled from one of the historic black and white photos that are used in the documentary.

Digital Storytelling Final Project

Alas, it is the rapidly approaching end to my first year in Grad School. Instead of getting sentimental or blasting Alice Cooper's "Schools Out" from a huge boom-box from the back of the bus, I figured I'd post some of the work that I actually accomplished in the midst of rainy and cold commutes, various bad take-out food and utter economic precarity. Instead of boring you with the dense pedantry of ton's of written work (which you can find in some of the earlier posts). I thought I'd stay snappy and designy and guaged toward the a/v components of the semester. First off-my final project in Kit Laybourne's Media Practices Concepts Class- An assignment entitled Digital Storytelling Project. This was an intensive project in which we "pitched" ideas to the class that revolved around those "often-told" anecdotal tales from the mosaic of our respective lives-you know, those ironic, gotcha, funny and tear jerking event and contingency tales. We brought in three different "pitches" and the class voted on which one they liked best as well as giving critical input. I decided to go with a story of how I had contracted viral meningitis on what was supposed to have been my first day of Kindergarten-as a working title I was stuck with the schmaltzy "Sepetember Passage" but there's really no title at all.