Link to video (not complete) (I have a bunch of green screen footage that I shot at school before the campus closed, and I’m thinking of incorporating it into my video. It will have a contrast in quality as I mainly shot with an old VHS camcorder, and the green screen is done w a DSLR. I would like to hear your feedback!
SHALISSA by ME a fashion film in a quarantined world
Artist Statement: We all have an alter ego within us. It might have given you the courage to present first in class or dance in front of a total group of strangers. It can help show you things about yourself you never thought you could do and give you the extra confidence to just be you. Shalissa is my alter ego that has helped me bring out my confidence in myself. She is bold and doesn’t let the world stop her from doing her work. This piece shows how her passion for fashion can not be kept from the world. She will try every outlet and means to still be her, even in this quarantine.
Right now we’ve got a storyboard, script, and all the panels we need to make a full animatic! All that’s left to do is to assemble everything. Paige and I have put all our work so far in the above Google Drive folder, and we highly recommend you check out the script as well as our storyboard!
Title: “No, we can’t go home, there’s food at McDonalds“.
I want to shed light on the constant barrage of advertisements that beckon us to consume and put money towards capitalistic for-profit establishments, conditioning the notion that assimilating oneself into American mainstream culture will bring success and equitable social status. Advertised mostly to the persons whose identities are not represented or recognized as being part of the Western consumer “standard”(…)
This project is an observance of the push in assimilation of the mainstream cultural through a first-generational narrative look on food red lining and infrastructure, emmigrant family dynamics of gratitude and guilt, and the media’s role in the enactment of algorithms that aim to deliver the personas of desirable, consumable objects.
*I need help with an overview for this statement! I know what I am trying to say, but I’m not sure how it sounds outside of my head. I’ll need to think some more on what to add or take away from the statement, if anything
I am excited!!! It’s been going swimmingly so far
I need to put one more coat of tinted resin on all of the hanging plastic boxes, as well as a small cardboard box of empty nuggets that I taped over so that the resin wouldn’t seep through it. It should take one night/day to fully dry, then i’ll put another coat on the small cardboard box after the initial layer
Then, once my dried fruit has gotten a little bit more dry (i’m air-drying them in the sunroom right now), I will dip each piece in resin until fully coated and attach it to the outside of the tulle-encased-in-resin-sculpture (from which I will remove the underside latex skeleton so that it stands on its own). We will see if I will have enough resin for all of the fruit pieces! This should also dry within 24-48 hours
I then need to code a quick code for slow color-changing gradients, in the warm ranges (reds, oranges, yellows, pinks, limes) and test my analog-to-digital cable converter with my HDMI output on my laptop and see how it looks on the MINI TV
I then need to de-construct the living room and do my set-up, for a whole day, taking pictures at different times of the day.
Those in my Interaction II class will recognize this project. I still want to do some tweaking of it over the weekend though. Karin informed me of having to ‘sandbox’ anything code related for the show, so I’m hoping Ben will talk more about this on Wednesday.
Title: There’s No Escaping COVID-19
Artist Statement: It seems that the COVID-19 pandemic (as a topic) is almost entirely unavoidable via the news. I think to some degree the news reflects our own psyche, which is constantly being bombarded with both information and misinformation regarding this virus. But what do you think? Is it possible to search for something and not have any results be related to what is happening now surrounding COVID-19? Find out with this search bar that navigates through news articles!
Most of my attention has been on making my own website (sierrabenson.com) which has social media links. I’m wondering, since we are technically allowed to have 10 things, if I should include my sketches for the project I ended up ditching? Or if I should stay on theme and have my COVID-19 zine included? (both of which are visible on my website)
Here is the link to me and Priyankka’s project!! We are calling it “A Conversation”. We split up the parts and storyboarded. Next is to actually animate the frames in a video! For now, we’ve put all of our files on google drive.
Link: https://youtu.be/CYKHa-hOy_I Title: (Sadly I haven’t come up with any other titles so its still for the moment) Suck it Up Buttercup
Artist Statement:
My goal with my work has always been to tell a story and give representation to those that haven’t had it. Over the years I have come to find focus in the things that are the effect me the most, disability, mental health, and on a grand scale, identity. How its constructed, by who, and what labels are become the most important to us.
I want people to ask themselves, what aren’t they noticing, what do they take for granted, and where are the disparities that don’t effect them? How can we do better in the face of those things? Whether better simply means to be kinder or means dismantling unfair and harmful rules.
I have dabbled in many things, but the main mediums of my work has come to be printmaking with intaglio plate, relief blocks, and screen print as well as video works and live performances.
Through these many mediums I hope that my work will not only interest and help the disability community but also anyone willing to learn and pay attention.
After our discussion, I think it’s best to hold off on my BFA exhibition for next semester/next spring(?). However, I have still continued to work on my original project: 12 Outside. The idea for this piece was at first just about undocumented families and their relationship with the country through governmental surveillance and physical dislocation. Through a story about a grandmother and her grandson, we go through this journey as they get a knock on their door. ICE agents attempt to bring the grandmother into custody so they can question her visa status while her grandson sits as a physical and verbal buffer.
However, this quickly became more of challenge to produce due to the sudden circumstances. CO-VID 19 has made it physically imposible to produce it with actors or any other additional help. But the bigger problem is the treatment and consequences that undocumented people are facing now during these trying times. Whether it’s at the detention facilities or their intimate homes, undocumented families are still being ignored and bluntly looked over, made invisible once more. So to reflect this, I’ve made the video even without any actors physically there. I’ve tried to emulate shots like they’re still there, and I’ve added voice over of actors that have sent me sound files.
I’ve attached some stills and a screenshot of the premiere workspace. I haven’t fully rendered the video so it’s taking a long time to export. I’m also still working on mixing in the dialogue.
I’m thinking of including two pieces of p5js into my submission. The first one being the digital version of my stickers that I wanted to spread around.
I have done something similar on my notebook, that I am debating whether or not I want to show side by side with the sketch.
The second one being what I originally planned for the exhibition show, I am not sure if I want to put a twist on it more than what I have made. I think that it is a cool piece and I am glad I have it in digital form.
Artist Statement: My work focuses on skeletons that I have named Ossificans, They have a consistency that I keep throughout any piece I make no matter how transformative. I use them as a foundation to create pieces in different directions spanning across various mediums. I want to see how far can I spread these skeletons until I fade into obscurity. Can I make something culturally significant without anyone knowing who I am as an artist? How far can these skeletons spread without my direct involvement? These are questions I want to answer through my work now and in the future.
The Final Project I settled on was a home vlog for every day since quarantine.
Here is a sample video of my project. This is unedited. I was considering shortening it because in the video it was before we cleaned our house up. My family doesn’t like it but I think it makes it better to show it progressively get cleaner as the days go by. I actually used up my 128GB SD Card some are stored on my phone camera. And I still have some footage on my 8GB one… So I might have to cut some footage for time’s sake rather than for artistic reasons. Hopefully, after I get some work out of the way I could finish this…
I’m thinking to include videos and pictures
Title: My Life in Quarantine
a representative image , 1080×1080 pixels (if you could only use one image this is the one)
I think this is a good depiction of the whole quarantine situation going on. While most of my footage was taken from home, I think this is the most representative.
“As an artist, I focus on how people interact with technology and how that interaction can be manipulated in order to create personal, emotional, and engaging pieces of work through code, video, and sound.“
A Representative Image
Probably a collection of these screenshots with the associated sound titles
