Clever Cathedral

The first thing I see in this short story is the narrator's seemingly cynical point of view on life and his Jealousy towards Robert. I liked the character development of the husband because even though you would think the story is mainly about the blind man, it is more about the husband's revelation on life along with the new perspective he has gained.

I felt the beginning of the short story was a bit slow but like any short story, it is difficult to sum up years of peoples' lives and try to develop the basis of their character based on a few short paragraphs. I feel like this is a dislike I have with many short stories because sometimes it's better not knowing the whole character. Sometimes this can leave more to the imagination of the reader.

Tension

For our action word project, I was given the word tension to use. When I first thought of the definition of tension, I thought mainly of surface tension. While walking to classes everyday, it is the tension of the ground below us that holds us firm to the ground. If we were to replace it with another substance, for example water, we would not be able to walk on it. Using this ideology, I put together two images using pictures from the Olentangy River and Woodruff avenue bridge to not only show a competing level for surface tension but to also represent the tension between the wildlife and the cars driving by. I felt that many people can drive by the Olentangy river every day and not see or hear the wildlife that calls it home. I also put together an audio file in which you can hear both the geese and the cars competing to occupy the same space.  

Walking Among Strangers

The approach I took with this micro-project was to go along the lines of making myself invisible in natural surroundings. I used pictures from a recent shopping trip to Easton with my friends and photoshopped myself into the photos but when you look at the photo, you only see clothes where there should be a full body. I felt that my super power of invisibility was almost a double entendre in that I don't want other people to see me and to remain anonymous but to also note that we almost are invisible to the people around us every day. When we are walking to class or shopping in the store, we are walking among strangers who we've never met, will never see again, and will probably never remember their faces. With these pictures I wanted to show that although we may walk by hundreds of people everyday, we never truly see or remember them making them 'invisible'.

I actually ended up making three different photos to combine to make one photo set for this project because I really got into making the images. I felt the first two were quite simple in just rearranging some of the foreground and background layers to position the picture of myself in-between, so I took one of the more candid photos while we were eating and photoshopped my head out of the picture. This actually proved to be a little troublesome and I wish I could have spent more time refining my methods for making images of what wasn't there but I felt that it turned out pretty well. I really liked doing the last photo because it took some effort to align all of the lines that you wouldn't normally notice like the lines of the wall behind my head and the line of the counter behind me. Overall I liked in my pictures how I was able to capture (somewhat candidly) the other people around me going about their normal routine to emphasize that they didn't really notice I was there.

Finding my place...

For this micro-project, I found I struggled a little bit with defining a place I could call my own on campus. Other than class, I spend most of my time in my room on my bed studying. Therefore I actually chose two places to signify as my own on campus: my room and the classroom. I used this idea to blend the idea of both places together resulting in these three images. For my statue I also blurred the lines a bit into what we can define as a statue. Since I sit in my bed most of the time I found it fitting to use that as my focal statue for the images. In the first image I incorporated the bed onto a white projector screen. I used the projector screen as a starting point for this photo set because in a lecture hall it is the first thing your eyes are drawn to and the center of your attention for most of the time. I placed my bed on the screen to show my presence in the room and to provide a vivid connection between my role of studying on my bed and paying attention in class.

For the second image, I repurposed my 'statue' a bit by covering the chairs in the lecture hall with the comforter print from my bed. I felt that this would provide a connection between the roles of where I sit to do my work both in and out of the classroom. To do this, I chose a row of chairs and covered the backs of them with my comforter print.

For my last and final image, I refocused my attention to the front of the room where the lecturer's podium stood. I wanted to make my 'statue' smaller in this picture because I felt this space for me didn't receive a whole lot of my attention. For this image I used the projection camera that lecturer's use to show their work up on the screen similar to how it would be used in a class. This also ties into my first image which portrayed the image on the screen. I especially like how your eye for this picture too is still drawn to the bed because of it's bright red colors against the mainly neutral background.