Final Project

For my final project, I wanted to do something creative and something that I love to do. One thing I love is Jesus Christ. The other thing I love is rapping and making beats/instrumentals. So, I decided to combine the two into one product. I took this as an opportunity to share my heart on the most important thing and open up myself to the class. I made a short video clip that plays the music as well as displays the lyrics to the class. That's pretty much it!

Connections

To be honest, I struggled with this assignment.  When I read the description, and even when I heard it from Beth in class, nothing screamed out in my mind saying "Do this!  This would be cool do do." (which normally happens to me when getting a new assignment).  

When thinking through it a little more, I decided that I wanted to do something dealing with tangible, real life connections.  So what I decided to do was take pictures of things around my house that have connections.  I ended up using 10 of the pictures I took.  Things I captured were wall outlets, surge protectors, internet wi-fi connections, aux. connection, and other things that I used as connections everyday.

Then, in thinking about the assignment and the amount of points it is worth, I decided to take those 10 pictures and turn them into 10,000 pictures.  (Yes, if my math is correct, there should be 10,000 mini pictures in the image that you see below).  I resized them and adjusted them to fit on one screen.  All 10,000 pictures of connections are connected to each other.

  

Ben Phillippe's Identity Project

Overall, I thought Ben's identity project was pretty cool. From what I can remember, it was very visually appealing. It had lots of different colors and textures on it (mainly from things outdoors like dirt, leaves, etc.). It was an interesting piece to look at.

As far as criticism goes for this one, I would say one thing it did like (at least for me) was personalization for it. I don't remember any major reasons as to why this creation of his was in fact somehow to be identified with him as a person, student, brother, or anything else. It could be that I just don't remember or wasn't paying too much attention as he explained, but I feel like if it was something that would have stood out, then I would have been able to remember it.

Again, though I think it was a solid effort. So, I would have to give this a grade of B (for Ben!). Good job bro.

Week Long Daily Blog

I realized that I never did the week long blog posting assignment that was given to us a little time ago, so I decided to go ahead and do it for this week.

Sunday: Today was more of a laid back day for me. I came back from a short weekend retreat today, so I was pretty tired. I came home to take a nap (which is rare for me), then went to a park and played basketball with some friends of mine. Then I came back to the crib and started getting some things done (seems like that's all I will be doing for the rest of the stinkin' semester!!!). My sister Michelle called me and told me that her and my brother Tim wanted to come to Indy for a few days to hang out with me and my parents. That was awesome to hear because I don't get to see my sister much anymore since she moved to Tennessee, and my brother just moved to Columbus, so it'd be awesome to get to see them for a few days. Only problem is that they would be coming toward the end of this semester and I may not get to spend much time with them because of work, classes, projects, capstone, and any other goodness. So, we'll see.

Last Week's Class

Overall, I thought last weeks class was pretty cool. For the first portion of the class, I thought the onion assignments that the students shared were interesting. The video to me was cool, but I didn't find it to be "oniony" at all. At least not with the description Beth is saying it should be like. I wasn't at all moved or stunned by the video. The pictures I thought were more along that direction. A few of the pictures to me were fairly shocking and revealing. Honestly, this assignment has been frustrating to me. I never usually have trouble coming up with ideas for projects like this, or at least concepts for creative assignments. But this assignment has been different because I just can't come up with anything for this thing. I've had a few ideas I've been wrestling with in my mind.

The second half of the class was interesting as well. It was cool seeing the pictures that Beth made. My favorite one was definitely the picture that looked like the huge, warrior in all black. It was awesome! The story about "Rose" was pretty freaky. As far as the in class exercise, my thoughts varied. At first it was frustrating coming up with something from the word "proof". But as our group brainstormed harder, we came up with a pretty cool concept which I was happy with.

"What The Bleep Do We Know" Comments

I thought it was interesting.  I am not a student nor have I ever looked into quantum physics, so most, if not all of this video was new information for me.  There were a few parts that I though were pretty cool.  Namely, the part that focused on our dreams, and how they were making the argument that there is nothing that can enter our mind/being without us having seen or experienced it somehow.  So somehow we must be seeing or experience these things without us knowing.  I thought this was kinda cool, even though I don't agree.  

As far as the rest of it, I was a little disappointed.  Mainly with the dissertations of God (or god I should put?).  I thought the arguments of God were unclear very weak.  Especially the guy who studied theology who was saying that we all are gods.  I felt that by the end of the movie, there was no clear definition of what they thought about God and it left me wading in the waters, even though they tried.  Overall though, it was an interesting film to watch.

2 Midterm Questions

1. I think the single best aspect of this course so far is its unconventionality.  I love the fact that I have no clue what we will be doing coming into class each day of, which causes me to anticipate what we will be doing.  Everything we’ve done in class so far has been fun and/or interesting, which I cannot say the same for my other courses.  Even though I may not agree with everything discussed in class, I have enjoyed it so far
   
2. The single most important thing I want to walk away with from this class is how to apply the things taught/discussed in class to my future working field (if I am in the New Media field).  It’s cool to learn about a lot of new concepts and ideas and discuss them, but I want to walk away with tangible application for the future wherever it may apply.