NEW MEDIA

Here is the link to my final animation. I’m mostly happy with how it turned out. I wanted to add blemishes to the background to give the animation a stronger “old film” feeling, but chose not to because I didn’t think the effect would have been worth the effort.

Throughout the semester, it has been suggested that I find a way to better express my reasons behind certain decisions. I struggle with this not because I lack an explanation, but rather because I’d like for meaning and purpose to be determined by the viewers. But I realize that I am a college student and not in a position to be bullheaded about these things, so here is a brief explanation.

At the time of writing A Dream Within A Dream, Poe had just lost his wife. He had lost his mother as an infant and been abandoned by his father. His brother died when Poe was 20 years old. A Dream Within A Dream addresses these and other losses with a tone of disillusionment toward life. The black and white photograph, piano music, and (sometimes) blurred transitions in my animation are meant to reflect this tone as well as elicit a feeling of introspection.

I think many who have difficulty dealing with an agonizing loss in one form or another begin to question themselves—their ideals, their prejudices, their relationships, their way of life—and begin to see the world from different perspectives. The brief transition to color at the end of my animation alludes to this concept of awakening to a new view or understanding of life.

Update

I don’t have much to say about my interactive animation process over the last week other than Flash is unbelievably tedious! I haven’t had any major technical issues, but the process of designing with Flash has produced a frustrating discordance between my creative abilities and my design capabilities.

I have decided to change my music track to “Escape!” by Philip Glass.

Music option #2.

Interactive Design

I’m weighing a handful visual ideas to set a specific mood for my interactive design. I’d really really like to use my own HDR image as a stage, but I’ll have to wait until Thanksgiving break to use my sister’s camera to shoot the image since all I have is a point and shoot. Not having an image on hand makes committing to a specific text very difficult at this point.

But as of right now, I’m considering

Bukowski’s True

one of Lorca’s best lines
is,
“agony, always
agony …”
think of this when you
kill a
cockroach or
pick up a razor to
shave
or awaken in the morning
to
face the
sun.

Edgar Alan Poe’s A dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

… or something else entirely.

Decisions, decisions.