Wednesday, October 2, 2013
My Dorm Room!
I've been at college for a few weeks now, and I thought I would share with you some pictures of my little corner of my dorm room!
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Thoughts on Twitter
Moving away from my usual art posts on this blog, I have some opinions I would like to write about and this blog seemed like a nice place to do so.
I have been in school for about a month now, and as it is my first year of college, I have entered the new atmosphere that is college level classes, and overall am quite content with what I am taking. I am part of the Parks School of Communications here at Ithaca College, and as such, I am required to participate in a class for all of the freshman in Parks, once a week for half of the semester. Now, I wont talk about my opinion on this class, but instead about their promotion of Twitter in this class. Every week, students are expected to "tweet" in and are also encouraged to tweet in questions for the speakers, and I have very mixed feelings about this. As someone who previously did not have a Twitter, the whole concept was very foreign to me. If you look at my Twitter account, I have one tweet a week, addressed at the class' designated hashtag in order to be marked present. But as I have become more acclimated to using Twitter, I am struck by the different ways people use it. While I think the idea of using social media in a class all about innovation and forward thinking is very clever, I am struck when looking through the tag at how my fellow freshman peers use their Twitters.
Today in class we had an issue where our leader for the seminar took a break to talk about the importance of being professional and understanding your "digital footprint" as many employers look over Facebook pages and Twitter feeds when considering job applicants. Now, I have always been of this mindset and try to be very aware about how I appear based on my Facebook page. But as I look at some of the Tweets that appear on my dashboard, not only from my peers in Park, but from others, I notice a different mindset that is prevalent in the Twitter community. It is easy to be disrespectful or post distasteful content on Twitter, prefaced by the general mindset of Twitter, where it is acceptable to complain about anything as well as be sarcastic and make snide comments. So as I was scrolling through Twitter in class today, I began to wonder what made it acceptable to behave this way on Twitter? Why do the many users of Twitter not think about the consequences when they post on the Park feed that they think one of the Skyped-in lecturers is cute for all to see? And then I considered who the most popular users of Twitter are--celebrities and other public figures.
It has become such a social norm to see Tweets by celebrities in which they voice (sometimes ignorant) complaints, vulgar thoughts, with the most popular of their tweets being passive aggressive slurs against other celebrities. Now there are those who maintain professional Twitters but also throw in some jokes and humor, and those are the 140 character notes that I enjoy reading the most. But the creation of unnecessary drama without real consequences is where I think the majority of Twitter's popularity comes from. For the most part, unless the Tweet is extremely controversial, we don't see any celebrities being reprimanded for minor offensive comments. Usually if a celebrity posts a shallow or borderline offensive tweet, we see it re-tweeted and responded to by other Twitter users, but it never really leaves the world of Twitter. That is, unless it is exceedingly offensive, controversial, or politically oriented but Tweets of that nature are not what I am discussing here. I am talking about the typical shallow comments, where ignorantly complaining about the smallest of things, criticizing others, and making shallow (and usually poorly received) jokes are openly accepted and mimicked by their followers.
There is a mentality instigated by this in which it is believed that nothing inside of Twitter can be real or have consequences, and I think this is further encouraged by using celebrity Twitter accounts as models. The movie stars and musicians who post minor offensive or inappropriate Tweets do usually have jobs that they can lose over it--they have their image and assumed personality and the influence of their name to protect them from being turned away in an interview based on the content in their Twitter feeds. But unfortunately this is not the case for the "nobody's" who are in my generation. With the extreme competitive nature of today, one cannot afford to have a whole collection of ignorant and half formed thoughts creating an implied persona of them that does not adhere to their true identity or the person they would like to project to the world, and I find that to be the true danger of how I see people using their Twitters.
I have been in school for about a month now, and as it is my first year of college, I have entered the new atmosphere that is college level classes, and overall am quite content with what I am taking. I am part of the Parks School of Communications here at Ithaca College, and as such, I am required to participate in a class for all of the freshman in Parks, once a week for half of the semester. Now, I wont talk about my opinion on this class, but instead about their promotion of Twitter in this class. Every week, students are expected to "tweet" in and are also encouraged to tweet in questions for the speakers, and I have very mixed feelings about this. As someone who previously did not have a Twitter, the whole concept was very foreign to me. If you look at my Twitter account, I have one tweet a week, addressed at the class' designated hashtag in order to be marked present. But as I have become more acclimated to using Twitter, I am struck by the different ways people use it. While I think the idea of using social media in a class all about innovation and forward thinking is very clever, I am struck when looking through the tag at how my fellow freshman peers use their Twitters.
Today in class we had an issue where our leader for the seminar took a break to talk about the importance of being professional and understanding your "digital footprint" as many employers look over Facebook pages and Twitter feeds when considering job applicants. Now, I have always been of this mindset and try to be very aware about how I appear based on my Facebook page. But as I look at some of the Tweets that appear on my dashboard, not only from my peers in Park, but from others, I notice a different mindset that is prevalent in the Twitter community. It is easy to be disrespectful or post distasteful content on Twitter, prefaced by the general mindset of Twitter, where it is acceptable to complain about anything as well as be sarcastic and make snide comments. So as I was scrolling through Twitter in class today, I began to wonder what made it acceptable to behave this way on Twitter? Why do the many users of Twitter not think about the consequences when they post on the Park feed that they think one of the Skyped-in lecturers is cute for all to see? And then I considered who the most popular users of Twitter are--celebrities and other public figures.
It has become such a social norm to see Tweets by celebrities in which they voice (sometimes ignorant) complaints, vulgar thoughts, with the most popular of their tweets being passive aggressive slurs against other celebrities. Now there are those who maintain professional Twitters but also throw in some jokes and humor, and those are the 140 character notes that I enjoy reading the most. But the creation of unnecessary drama without real consequences is where I think the majority of Twitter's popularity comes from. For the most part, unless the Tweet is extremely controversial, we don't see any celebrities being reprimanded for minor offensive comments. Usually if a celebrity posts a shallow or borderline offensive tweet, we see it re-tweeted and responded to by other Twitter users, but it never really leaves the world of Twitter. That is, unless it is exceedingly offensive, controversial, or politically oriented but Tweets of that nature are not what I am discussing here. I am talking about the typical shallow comments, where ignorantly complaining about the smallest of things, criticizing others, and making shallow (and usually poorly received) jokes are openly accepted and mimicked by their followers.
There is a mentality instigated by this in which it is believed that nothing inside of Twitter can be real or have consequences, and I think this is further encouraged by using celebrity Twitter accounts as models. The movie stars and musicians who post minor offensive or inappropriate Tweets do usually have jobs that they can lose over it--they have their image and assumed personality and the influence of their name to protect them from being turned away in an interview based on the content in their Twitter feeds. But unfortunately this is not the case for the "nobody's" who are in my generation. With the extreme competitive nature of today, one cannot afford to have a whole collection of ignorant and half formed thoughts creating an implied persona of them that does not adhere to their true identity or the person they would like to project to the world, and I find that to be the true danger of how I see people using their Twitters.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Pop-Up Pages and Cards
A recent interest of mine has been creating pop-up pages, and I have been experimenting a lot with collage and paper folding! Here are my first two creations!
I made this card for a friend for her birthday:
This is a pop-up I made in my moleskine notebook:
I made this card for a friend for her birthday:
I'll keep you all posted as I continue to make more fun paper creations!
Monday, June 10, 2013
The Cadbury Cocoa Girl
Hello all!
This is a very recent mixed-media piece of mine, inspired by an old Cadbury Cocoa advertisement that I found in a decoupage book at school. The piece consists of acrylic paint, hand carved vellum and paper, and fabric.
This is a very recent mixed-media piece of mine, inspired by an old Cadbury Cocoa advertisement that I found in a decoupage book at school. The piece consists of acrylic paint, hand carved vellum and paper, and fabric.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
iPhone Adventures
Recently I upgraded to a smartphone, an iPhone to be specific, and have been having a lot of fun with it. Although I'm not super into games and apps, I am very fond of my Merriam Webster Dictionary app, which includes the "Word of the Day." Although I am not too savvy with it yet, I have found some cool accessories for my iPhone.
A few weeks ago, I was inspired by the pressed flower phone cases on etsy (http://www.etsy.com/search?q=pressed%20flower%20iphone%20case&view_type=gallery&ship_to=US&ref=auto3) and decided to make my own, utilizing epoxy resin to coat the flowers.
Here is the finished product:
In addition to making myself a case, I got myself an $8 fisheye lens for my iphone which has provided a lot of amusement for me in the past few weeks. Here are some of my favorite (unattractive) pictures:
A few weeks ago, I was inspired by the pressed flower phone cases on etsy (http://www.etsy.com/search?q=pressed%20flower%20iphone%20case&view_type=gallery&ship_to=US&ref=auto3) and decided to make my own, utilizing epoxy resin to coat the flowers.
Here is the finished product:
 |
| The epoxy is very shiny, so I had some trouble getting a decent photo. |
In addition to making myself a case, I got myself an $8 fisheye lens for my iphone which has provided a lot of amusement for me in the past few weeks. Here are some of my favorite (unattractive) pictures:
 |
Setasha and I think our faces look like they could belong on the cover of Neil Gaiman's book Coraline:
And to add to this hilarious post about my iphone and the fisheye lens, I am including a link to a short video that shows some of the footage that I've collected this past spring (including more terribly unattractive fisheye stuff). The song used is "Radar Detector" by the delightful Darwin Deez.
You can find it here: https://vimeo.com/67163944
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Monday, May 27, 2013
My AP Studio Art Portfolio
Hello all,
I know it's been a while since my last update, so I thought I'd show you all the main focus of my art-related pursuits for the last 8 months: my AP Studio Art Portfolio.
The concentration section of my portfolio can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95914365@N07/sets/72157633550996864/
For those of you who don't know, the concentration section of the portfolio is where you explore once central idea or concept through 10-12 pieces of art.
And the breadth portion is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95914365@N07/sets/72157633550901550/
The breadth section of the portfolio is where all of the other, non-concentration related work goes.
Now that I am on summer vacation, I hope to be able to share more of my creative adventures with you in the upcoming months!
I know it's been a while since my last update, so I thought I'd show you all the main focus of my art-related pursuits for the last 8 months: my AP Studio Art Portfolio.
The concentration section of my portfolio can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95914365@N07/sets/72157633550996864/
For those of you who don't know, the concentration section of the portfolio is where you explore once central idea or concept through 10-12 pieces of art.
And the breadth portion is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95914365@N07/sets/72157633550901550/
The breadth section of the portfolio is where all of the other, non-concentration related work goes.
Now that I am on summer vacation, I hope to be able to share more of my creative adventures with you in the upcoming months!
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