My Fear Project

1. Examine the Situation

Fear is something that is hard for a person to admit. At least hard for me. Fear is when you do something or you are subjected to something that makes you anxious or nervous. Fear keeps me from being myself sometimes. It keeps some people from doing things that others may love to do. It creates limits for us and 'fishbowls' us.

Fear could be used to intimidate people (use of of force or weapons). Fear can be used as a means of advertising sometimes. Marketing fear can cause people to buy your product if they think it will cease they're fears to exit and alleviate their tensions.

2. Formulate an Experiment

My experiment will double as a fear project and a sort of journey of self discovery. I'm going to set aside a guys night out for myself and just examine and analyze my flaws. Sort of like a spiritual type of discovery. Once I find out these flaws I will announce them to the class because there is nothing I fear more than people knowing about who I am at my core. It will be extremely difficult for me to get up in front of class and say these things.

3. Hypothesize the Expected Outcome

I predict that my classmate may be at awe and shocked at first at how deep the list of fears I read off will be. I think they may be put off. Hopefully I share some of the same fears as my classmates but I'm thinking nobody will understand how I take my fears exactly as I do. Yet it's still going to be important to me that I carry this out and do this.

4. Conduct The Experiment

Experiment conducted.

5. Observe the Reaction

Reactions observed.

6. Analysis of Hypothesis with Actual Outcome

So my hypothesis came perfectly true. I knew some individuals in the class knew what I was going through and understood my fears as others just sort of brushed it off because they haven't been through what I have. Each life experience is unique and subjective so I can't expect everyone to know where I'm coming from.

7. Propose Changes to your Idea Based on What Happened.

If I could go back I guess I would create a more unique way to present my fears. (Index cards, power point, etc.) However I still see the benefits of doing what I did. It was part of my actual fear to say these things outright instead of finding some kind of shortcut to present them.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Examining Someone Else's Fear

1. What was it and who did it?
At first I really wanted to do Sarah's fear assignment when she was talking about how she first found out she was deaf and what she goes through dealing with it day by day. I guess it's because I never knew someone who was deaf or heard a deaf person really come out and let it all out like that. But I think I want to relate with Aaron Turner's fear assignment. He basically did something similar to mine and admitted to things about himself.

2. Why did you respond to it so strongly?
I feel like I responded so strongly because I related to it on a strong level. I understood what he meant by the shell shock he felt from transitioning to High School except I felt that in Middle School. I was quiet and shy because all I would do is think. I still catch myself doing it a lot. I just think of all the outcomes of a situation before even approaching the though of acting on the situation/conversation. It's good to do but it can also fishbowl you to the extent where you can't openly be yourself.

3. How does it impact how you see your own project?

It helps me know that I'm not alone and that there are plenty of people out there who have the problems I do. I realized fears are usually irrational so all these fears in class, though we're aware of them, they're also irrational. Aaron and I have a lot in common I think more than I knew before.

Thus Far

3 Things I'll Always Remember From Class:

1. The number of choices we have today. The video we watched where it was explained how many different types of jeans we have available today compared to 20 or 30 years ago really sort of opened my mind. We have WAY too many options these days on how to tackle things and how to DO things. There is no set standard anymore so it takes more time to do things. I really liked this observation and it sort of just made me aware of how expanding our world is and how 10 years from now there will be even MORE options on how to do things.

2. The Bead. Everyone will remember the first assignment. It was by far the most vague I think and most memorable. We're just given a single bead and told to do something with it and blog about it. Literally we could have done ANYTHING. I just thought it was an interesting way to start off a class.

3. I'll also remember the fun assignment. In no other class will your homework ever be to go out and have fun. It reminds me of Elementary school all over again. I didn't have to think for this one because I set aside an hour of fun for myself every day. It's completely necessary.

---

Things that are different from this class compared to any other is obviously the criteria on which assignments are ... assigned? There is no rubric or standard. You can approach everything ANY way you like and I LOVE that. This is how it will be in the field or rather how it SHOULD be in the field. You want your work to stand out from others so why only limit your self or "fishbowl" yourself to a set standard that everyone else will be doing? Life is limitless and so is your work.

I expect...

By the end of this class I expect to have opened my mind on how to approach things more abstractly when it comes to video, sound, etc. I expect to learn more about myself and my fears. I also expect to come to terms with who I am.

Today in class

Today in class we talked about different approaches to things we are used to. These things ranged from pottery to movie tickets to drawings made out of food. It was very cool to see how many different things everyone came up with. I was really blown away by the emotional impact and meaning behind Susan's lightbulb with water in it. Not only because of the hard hitting back story behind the tornado rainbow which gave her the idea but the metaphor the lightbulb gave. Do you view it as half full or as half empty?

Classroom Sounds

Amanda Wright and I worked on our assignment together. At first we took time to think about both of our totems and realized when it came down to the core, these were both things we did to simply pass the time. They were things we could do constantly without stopping and sometimes things we did without even noticing we did them. We evolved this concept into hearing things that you normally don't think you are hearing. We decided to go with sounds you hear in a classroom. You might recognize a few.

Reflection of the Totems

Today everyone in class went around and shared their totems.

It amazes me me how much different personalities we have in class and also how similar of personalities we have. I am kind of stuck on what to do with my totem since it was just simply a piece of plastic. I'm not sure where to go from here.

What if...?

1. Arabic: nimr
2. Bosnian: tigar
3. Chinese (Simplified): Hu
4. Chinese (Traditional): Lao Hu
5. Croatian: tigar
6. Czech: tygr; tygřice
7. Danish: tiger
8. Dutch: tijger
9. Estonian: tiiger
10. English: tiger
11. Finnish: tiikeri
12. French: tigre; tigresse
13. German: tiger
14. Greek: tigri
15. Guaraní: jaguarete
16. Hebrew: Ṭīgrīs
17. Hindi: sher
18. Hungarian: tigris
19. Icelandic: tígrisdÿr
20. Indonesian: harimau; macan
21. Interlingua: tigre
22. Irish: tíogar
23. Italian: tigre
24. Japanese: tora
25. Khmer: khlā-thum
26. Kannada: huli
27. Korean: horang-i
28. Lao: syya
29. Latin: tigris
30. Latvian: tīģeris
31. Lithuanian: tigras
32. Macedonian: tigar
33. Malayalam: puli; vyaaghram
34. Manchu: tasha
35. Norwegian: tiger
36. Persian: babr
37. Polish: tygrys
38. Brazilian: tigre
39. Portuguese: tigre
40. Romanian: tigru
41. Russian: tigr
42. Sanskrit: vyāghraḥ
43. Sinhala: koṭiya)
44. Slovak: tiger
45. Spanish: tigre; tigresa
46. Swahili: simba
47. Swedish: tiger, tigrinna
48. Thai: seua
49. Tibetan: tag
50. Turkish: kaplan

---

What if you could say Tiger in _______?

What if...?

1. Arabic: nimr
2. Bosnian: tigar
3. Chinese (Simplified): Hu
4. Chinese (Traditional): Lao Hu
5. Croatian: tigar
6. Czech: tygr; tygřice
7. Danish: tiger
8. Dutch: tijger
9. Estonian: tiiger
10. English: tiger
11. Finnish: tiikeri
12. French: tigre; tigresse
13. German: tiger
14. Greek: tigri
15. Guaraní: jaguarete
16. Hebrew: Ṭīgrīs
17. Hindi: sher
18. Hungarian: tigris
19. Icelandic: tígrisdÿr
20. Indonesian: harimau; macan
21. Interlingua: tigre
22. Irish: tíogar
23. Italian: tigre
24. Japanese: tora
25. Khmer: khlā-thum
26. Kannada: huli
27. Korean: horang-i
28. Lao: syya
29. Latin: tigris
30. Latvian: tīģeris
31. Lithuanian: tigras
32. Macedonian: tigar
33. Malayalam: puli; vyaaghram
34. Manchu: tasha
35. Norwegian: tiger
36. Persian: babr
37. Polish: tygrys
38. Brazilian: tigre
39. Portuguese: tigre
40. Romanian: tigru
41. Russian: tigr
42. Sanskrit: vyāghraḥ
43. Sinhala: koṭiya)
44. Slovak: tiger
45. Spanish: tigre; tigresa
46. Swahili: simba
47. Swedish: tiger, tigrinna
48. Thai: seua
49. Tibetan: tag
50. Turkish: kaplan

---

What if you could say Tiger in _______?

An Interactive Book!

I posted the link earlier but YouTube is still processing the videos. They will be done and linked by the time I present this in class.

I guess ever since I read my first book or saw my first movie, I wanted it to end another way. Not that I wasn't satisfied with the ending as it was but I wished that if I were to watch a movie or read a book for the second time, maybe the same thing wouldn't happen somehow. Maybe things will turn out differently for the characters. Kind of a crazy though but it was a dream of mine since I was a kid.

I feel like this is where the next big thing will be for all forms of media. There have been choose your own adventure books but they are not the same experience. I want the smell, sound and feeling that you're there and experiencing these things with the characters.

What Enslaves You?

1. A project of mine that really excited me when I first began was an interactive video project for library. The University Library comissioned my partner and I to create some kind of interactive YouTube experience for students to help promote the library. The thrilling part about this was that I was being paid to do this and at the same time it was something I really wanted to do and had fun doing. It was like a dream project come true and being paid to do it! I had plenty of ideas circulating in my head and couldn't wait to begin with my partner and start working on it.

2. Completely different experience when I actually started the project. It turns out my partner didn't do NEAR the amount of work that I thought he would do and it ended up being a huge burden on me. I thought we would all be doing equal amount of work but it turns out I had to do every single aspect of the project. This as it turns out didn't excite me at all. It became too much work on my part and zapped the fun out of it. It quickly became a chore.

3. The limitations that forced my project to change were:

- The amount of work
- The little time I had to work on it due to school and my job
- The little amount of help I was getting from my so called partner
- The due date because it was coming up fast and we were nowhere near done.

4. The limitation with the bead was completely different. With the bead there were no limitations so I had a fun time coming up with all sorts of different ideas. Now maybe the limitation was that I could just do ONE idea out of the many. But the usual limitations applied here as well. (The due date and all)

All in all the library project worked out fine. (sort of...I'm STILL working on it and am the only one working on it) It frustrates me that my partner and I got payed equally to do far unequal amounts of work. I guess this is a lesson learned to choose my partners wisely next time!

The Seckint Day of Class

A topic that stood out to me in class today was the concept of choices and how we have too many to choose from. The video we watched from TED.com was interesting to me because I agreed with pretty much every word he was saying. It's almost as if I knew what he was saying all along but it was just subconscious and not brought to the surface.

Daniel brought up that he had low expectations when he went to see movies like Green Lantern and Captain America. Then conversely he had high expectations when he went to see Harry Potter. He ended up having a different experience each time.

To me, I end up having super high expectations when I see movies. For example, I saw the comic book movie "Thor" over the summer and aboslutely hated it. I have yet to find a friend who feels the same way because they all loved it. When asked why I hated it by a friend, I told him I was comparing it to great comic book movies like The Dark Knight or Spiderman 2. My friend then said, "Well of course you're not gonna like it if you compare it to Dark Knight. You can't compare the two."

But then I ask, "Why the hell not?" I SHOULD have high expectations because I'm paying 10 dollars to see something I want to at least partially enjoy. In some cases I would pay 14 dollars!! If a movies like Dark Knight is so fantastic it should set the bar for future movies. ALL future movies should strive to be like it or reach the same amount of entertainment as it. That's how I feel about all expectations as a whole. Everything should have SOME kind of bar to be set otherwise we wouldn't be striving to SET any bar? Am I making sense??

The Bead

I sat there on the first day of class, ready for Beth to pass out the egg that will surely have all the noobs confused. I had it all figured out what I was going to do with my egg the day I signed up for classes. Then she pulled out a Shamalayan-esque twist and handed us all BEADS instead of the usual egg because she thought people were catching on to the egg thing. Damn it.

This had me for a loop for several days as I pondered several video ideas to do with my Bead. I knew it had to be a video idea because I want this class to really let me explore just what I can do with my talents.

In a stroke of either brilliance or coincidence, I happened upon Thomas Lewis who was talking about his electronic microscope that he had in his office. He described to me what it could do and it opened up so many possibilities. He let me borrow the Dino Scope from him and after a long and busy weekend I set out to accomplish my vision.

I wanted to see what the Bead saw. I wanted to see everything through it's eye but obviously I couldn't because the human eye can only go so far. The Dino Scope let me capture the Bead's perspective and I was able to see straight through it. It's sort of paradoxical that you are able to see straight through the Bead yet what you are seeing is not very straight forward.

Everything is zoomed in at microscopic HD quality and it turns the most common objects into very perplex and amazing patterns. It gives a sense that you are the Bead and this is what it sees. I placed the Bead atop of many objects including tables, chairs, rugs, blankets, shirts, fruit, pop tarts, remotes and even beards. That's not even half of what I placed the Bead on. In the end I chose the ones that looked the clearest on video so it could demonstrate my point further.

I thrive on attempting to see what other people see and view the world as others do. It's important to know that not only people have a certain perspective on things, but so does the ground you stand on, the keyboard you type on or the steering wheel you turn. It's weird to think about but all those things view the world around them in a very unique way. Even though you could study the mental perspectives of certain people and the physics of certain objects, no amount of psychology could have you gazing upon the microscopic wonders of a kitchen table or a bottle cap.

First Day of Class

What happened in class today? Well I knew coming into this, and having taken at least 3 classes with Beth in the past, that this would be a unique experience. What I saw today was a Beth even MORE open and extroverted than in the past!

I've heard a lot about this class and it truly was a smart move to change the egg into a bead this semester because I had a plan going into the first day of what I would have done with the egg. If it had been the egg than I probably wouldn't get the full experience this class offers.

As I had predicted before coming to class, I knew for sure after today that what I'll get out of this class will be exactly what I make of it. Meaning, if I decide to bullshit through the semester, what I'll get is bullshit. If I put my thought into it and try to grow from this semester than there is nowhere to go but up. I look forward to this semester and what it will bring to the table for me when it comes to videos/films. I hope to strive off the beaten path and try to do something unique each time.

Oh and Beth, is this what you were looking for??

JK!