Art and Technology/ Digital Illustration

        Firstly, as someone who is pretty particular about their work I found it difficult to submit and put out to the world something didn't always look exactly the way I wanted it to. I think I would need to work on my drawing skills a bit before I would be fully happy with a project like this. But because I knew my drawings wouldn't be the most mind-blowing thing to look at, I decided to focus more on the storytelling aspect. Music is one of the most important things to me, so naturally that was the idea that came to me first. I've also always appreciated the many different mediums that music can be listened to on, so that was the skeleton of the project. The certain love story aspect happened almost without me thinking about it. I guess I romanticized the idea of making someone a mixtape, and since the majority of people today aren't in possession of a cassette player, this turned into the next best thing. So it was a process that I enjoyed going through more tha

              I thought it was interesting to take a picture with a bike that didn't belong to me, because that almost felt like two layers of inserting myself into a setting. Someone who didn't know the scenario could see this picture and think that I rode a bike to a place I am comfortable being in, when in reality  I had never sat in this bench or walked in this area before. This makes me think how easy it is on social media or online to create realistic looking things from a place that was staged, or make a place look more interesting just by sitting in it when normally people wouldn't notice it or think of how the blue of a bike would look in a picture.

As far as decontextualization goes, it is likely going to take quite a lot of it to interpret Mozart’s  Don  Giovanni  as  a twenty first century video game.  I think the best place to start would be to strip the opera down to its  bare essentials , translate that into the visuals of the game, and then build it back up from there. The set design of the show already isn’t very  extravagant  and often rather empty at times, which could lend itself very well to the sleek modernism that is typically associated with technology. The landscape of the game could be made of rectangular panels that the player  has to  navigate across, much like the shape of a st age  itself. This organization could also draw on the architecture of the set design towards the end of the opera when  Leporello  and Don Giovanni meet up again after pretending to be  each other ; that is, the set piece comprised of various levels interconnected by numerous ladders and stairs. Take the same general design but turn th

        Aria is not the type of media I am used to watching, and I admittedly was expecting to not like it. While it wasn't the type of visuals I am usually drawn to, it did what it set out to do in the feelings it conveyed. It very viscerally portrayed loss and the hopelessness and often self destructive behaviors that result. In Butterfly's case, the self destruction ended up being literal in what was quite an unsettling scene to watch, painting a very clear picture of what it feels like to be torn apart when everything you love is taken from you.       I also found it interesting that the record player was almost always seen, being the main thing that linked Butterfly to her love until her child was born. I also found the kite imagery very intriguing, showing mother and child tethered to each other until they were split apart. Their connection running so deep and strong made it all the more tragic to again physically rather than just metaphorically see that linkage break.

      As an exercise in trust, looking directly into someone's eyes for an extended amount of time was more difficult than I thought it would be. I wasn't expecting that it would be challenging to hold enough composure to transition from just staring to really looking and seeing. I realized that it was instinct for me to move my eyes away from the other person's without consciously trying to do it. Staring into their eyes for that long felt like something I shouldn't be doing, and I had to override my normal instincts to be able to do it. The exercise definitely displayed that trust is often a difficult thing that might seem unnatural at first. Eye contact is very vulnerable, and that openness is something that most artists need, so I can see the benefit of doing this.