Author: Allie Dunnaville

Our project, titled “Dream Room”, is a website which allows users to explore my partner and I’s ideal bedroom when we were in Elementary and Middle school. Concept of the project is rooted from both of our appreciations for collage and Melissa and Doug dress-up board games we played as kids. After school, I would often go home and cut up newspapers and magazines then paste them inside a scrapbook. As I got older, my collages became more sophisticated, and I actually used canvases as material instead of scrapbooks. The idea with the board game is that you are given different props, and you use those props to dress up a figure. With these two ideas combined, we further developed our concept by creating our “dream room.” The user can interact with the room by clicking on each of the different objects within the room such as the television, radio, bed, piggy bank, chest, dog, cat, etc. Once an object is clicked on the User can see a more in-depth explanation for the inspiration and significance of the objects.

Something that worked really well with this project was the overall aesthetic and concept. Oona and I did our best to make the aesthetic as close to a scrapbook as possible. We drew almost everything by hand ourselves, and if we did not draw it by hand, we used photoshop and other apps on our phones to make the edges around the images look like they were torn. But we decided we wanted to tear everything to give our users the impression that everything was made by us and had a collage feel. Before finalizing our project, we had brief user testing. During this process Oona and I had not finished our website, but we did have all of the pictures drawn out. When we presented our idea, the most helpful piece of feedback we received suggested that we should add in a background behind the actual bedroom that would make it feel like even more of a collage. I thought adding this small element really pulled everything together aesthetically and solidified our collage concept. Lastly, something that did not work well in my opinion during the process of creating this project was when I designed the background of the bedroom. I did not have anything to go off of, and basically, I was just eyeing dimensions I thought were appropriate in order to give the room as much dimension as I could. I realized after talking with a classmate about my struggles I could have just used a 3D software on a computer to easily design the room. But, in the end, I was actually able to create it on my own without the help of additional software. Despite this method taking a longer time, I was happy with the outcome.

Given more time in the future, I would have liked to implement sound effects when you clicked on the object and also animated the objects when you click on them. As an example. I would have liked to have the bed become wavy and make swishing sounds to make the fact that it was a water bed more dramatic. Furthermore, the judges suggested Oona and I should have recorded our thought process in designing the project and allowed the user to listen to this conversation somewhere on the website, maybe the home page. Overall, I plan to continue exploring how I can improve my final project by implementing some of these suggestions and concepts in the future.

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~op531/internet-art/title.html

For our final project, Oona and I decided to create something which reminded both of us of our childhoods. An idea that immediately starting sparking ideas for both of us was collages. I found my love for collage when I was in elementary school. After school, I would often go home and cut up newspapers and magazines then paste them inside a scrapbook. As I got older, my collages became more sophisticated, and I actually used canvases as material instead of scrapbooks.

Our overall idea is combined with our love for collaging as well as the Melissa and Doug Dress up board game. The idea with the board game is that you are given different props, and you use those props to dress up a figure. With these two ideas combined, we further developed our concept by creating our “dream room.” Basically, our goal was to collage/design a room that we both wanted as kids. We included items such as a waterbed, egg chair, television, my dog, Oona’s cat, and many others! Users can interact with the room by clicking on different elements within the room and read hand-written notes from Oona, and I that explain why those specific items appear in our “dream room.” There are also pictures included beside the letters which are either about where the idea originated from (such as the waterbed gif, that is from the Goofy movie), or real pictures (such as my dog and I).

For the project, I spent a lot of my time finding images online for the room, writing the notes and converting them into PNGs, as well as designing several elements on my computer such as the backdrop, and also the poster-board/collage board. I primarily used photoshop and Keynote to develop these two components. The most challenging aspect for me in designing the backdrop was when making the depth of the room. I ended up having to use different shapes and lines in Keynote to create the proper dimensions needed to make the room three-dimensional. Because I’ve haven’t learned how to use programs to create 3D elements, I ended up having to eye everything myself, and it took longer than needed probably.

While making the PNGs of the letters and some of the drawings, Oona informed me of an app called Superimpose. It allowed me to convert images into PNGs much quicker than using photoshop, which is what I’ve done in the past.

Some additional feedback we received was regarding the layout and design. After briefly talking with Professor Moon, he suggested we added paper in the background or some type of collage. We were able to implement both of these concepts in our final presentation of the project!

Overall. I am super proud of how this project turned out, especially with the limited time constraints and the rest of the major projects we had due for Finals week. Our goal was to have this project simulate our childhoods as much as possible and have a general collaged 2000s theme throughout, and I think we definitely accomplished this. After receiving feedback from my classmates and judges today, some future improvements would be adding sound effects, making objects animated when you hover over them, and also considering adding a conversation between Oona and me at the home page, which would emulate the discussion we had when brainstorming the project idea. Thanks!

This article discussed the history of net art from the beginning of when it was first accidentally created via an email. Overall, I found reading about all of the different examples of how the internet has been used throughout history as a platform for artists exciting and informative.

Furthermore, after reading this information, it got me thinking even more about the way the internet has changed art, in terms of the creation process and also how people view/access it. Net art allows individuals from all over the world to collaborate on something together, and it also only exists in the form of media. Also, because the web is such an international tool it allows for greater creative possibilities as anyone from around the world with access to the internet and a computer/laptop can collaborate together—this to me is what makes the idea of internet art that much more enticing. I hope I can take advantage of this feature in the future.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-million-internet-users-created-piece-art-180962867/

The art piece I chose is called, “The story of Place is an eternal story, about the three forces that humanity needs to make art, creation, and technology possible.” I think this piece is actually quite powerful because It was not made by one individual. Instead, it was made by a collection of about 32,265 anonymous Reddit users for 72 hours.

To give some context, on April Fool’s day of 2017 Reddit gave its users a blank 1,000 by 1,000 pixel canvas to place colored/illustrated tiles anywhere. Although this art project can no longer have any additions made to it by users, I still think it is a significant piece; Because although the result of this piece may seem chaotic, the way it was created turned out to be collaborative and striking. 

What I found most compelling about this piece of art is that I think it shows you a way in which the internet can connect a large group of people to create something meaningful together. The whole concept of this art piece emphasizes the importance of the internet and how it can connect people from all over the world who may never have thought to collaborate on something together before. Although the artwork may not be the most “beautiful,” the larger significance is what’s most important.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jh5231/VideoProject/

This was by far my favorite project of the semester. Film and photography are something I am passionate about, so having the chance to utilize these mediums for this project made me very happy and excited!

My partners and I decided to create a film based on international students’ experiences attending NYU Shanghai. More specifically we chose to juxtapose the expectations and realities of what Shanghai life is all about. I found the first week of the assignment most challenging because my teammates and I actually struggled with finding a concept we were happy about. Finally, after completely changing our film concept twice, we all agreed that making a scene about the realities and expectations of an NYU Shanghai international student’s life would be meaningful, engaging, and fun!

My role in the project consisted of writing/storyboarding some of the scenes and editing the film. I used Final Cut Pro to edit all of the films. At first, our concept for making the film interactive was creating two separate films for reality and expectations where users were given the option to click on the screen and switch between different films. Although, after I finalized editing both films and received feedback from classmates, myself and my team realized the design wouldn’t be cohesive enough because each of the eleven clips had different background sounds/music. That’s why we decided to change the interactivity element of our project to have the videos positioned side by side. I think if we had more time we could have re-thought about ways to make the website more unique and complex. Moon gave us examples such as, blurring out other elements in the background of the site or making the playing video larger than the paused one in the center of the screen. But, overall the change in interactivity meant I had to deconstruct the two videos I created and create eleven individual mini-films for the realities and expectations.

While editing, I tried my best to extract and emphasize the humor of the clips because, during the first showing of our rough cuts in class, everyone seemed to really enjoy this aspect. I deliberately used filters, music, transitions, slow-motion, and other effects to accomplish this while editing. For example, in some scenes such as Jon using chopsticks, I chose to have fast/upbeat music. Versus when Jon “misses” home in another scene I have sad, slow music –probably over dramatized.

In terms of my process, I started out by laying out the film in Final Cut Pro, choosing which takes (we had multiple takes for each scene) I wanted to use in the film. Then I trimmed down each clip and added in a title slide which tells the audience what the reality or expectation is and also includes a number ranging from 1-6. After I added this element, I used a freeze frame of the first frame and layered it on top of the title slide, then made the freeze frame black and white to draw the audience member’s attention to the words and not the background image. Next, I decided what music would best suit the clip. I used royalty free music I found online to add into most of the scenes. Finally, I increased the volume from the externally recorded audio, adjusted the color, and added in transitions and other extra style elements.

Overall, my personal goal for this project was to create high-quality videos, to improve my video editing skills, to learn something, and to enjoy the project. I believe I met all of these my goals with the help of my teammates.