Author: Allie Dunnaville

Story Line:

– Each of these will play right into the next – they could all be taking place within the same day, or even the same few hours

– Each clip should be about 10-15 seconds

– Each of the Expectation clips must take the same amount of time as its Reality counterpart

– Choose a roughly equal amount from “Positive -> Negative” (expectation is better than reality) and “Negative/Neutral -> Positive” (expectation is not as good as reality)

– The clips will be combined to form a separate Expectations video and Reality video, which you can switch back and forth between in the browser. Both of these videos are perfectly synced up with each other, with the same music used for both.

– The clips that’s “worse” can be darkened a bit, while the corresponding clip that’s “better” is shown in normal brightness

I feel like I can genuinely relate to Chimamanda Adichie’s Ted Talk. As she went on to tell the story of her roommate and how she assumed certain things about Ms. Adichie and felt sorry for her based on the fact that she was from Africa, I started thinking of instances of my own where people assumed things about me because of the way I looked, dressed, or presented myself. As an example, lots of people think I am Pilipino, Thai, or Hawaiian because I share similar features with people who identify with being these ethnicities. But, in reality, I am actually none of these ethnicities—I am mixed race. Another instance where people have categorized me into a single story is when they assume my parents are not divorced or that I was raised by both my mother and father when I was actually only raised by my father.

Assigning single stories to people is very risky because it creates stereotypes which are untrue and incomplete. Like Adichie says, “They can often make one story become the only story.” It is essential to seek diverse perspectives and writers must focus on telling stories about their own life experiences. This is the best way to break down certain stereotypes and clichés.

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~op531/audio-coding2/familymart.html

For this audio project, my partner and I decided we wanted the focus of our project to be on creating ASMR sounds. ASMR stands for an autonomous sensory meridian response. In translation, this basically means the relaxing, stimulating feeling some people get down their spines, heads, and rest of their body from listening to gentle sounds.

It wasn’t until we received feedback during our project proposal to choose one category of sounds. After discussing ideas with my partner, we decided to focus on FamilyMart foods. I touched on this during my partner and I’s in-class presentation, but we agreed on what foods/drinks we wanted to use based on what we thought would make a diverse array sound effects for the user. We did not wish just to choose chips or only drinks because we did not believe these sounds would be unique enough. But, at the same time after doing some research (https://asmruniversity.com/art-of-asmr-tips-for-artists/), I found that often ASMR triggers involve people’s favorite foods or comfort foods such as potato chips, so this is another factor I considered when choosing foods in FamilyMart.

One of the leading roles I had in this project was creating and editing the audio. To generate the ASMR sounds I used three items. My MacBook Pro, Beats headphones, and a Yeti Microphone. I recorded the sounds using QuickTime Player which was previously installed in my laptop. I set the Yeti audio recording setting to bidirectional, which intakes sound from the front and back of the microphone. I chose this setting because after testing all the other functions, this was the clearest of them all. I also did some background research (https://asmruniversity.com/art-of-asmr-tips-for-artists/) and found that when recording ASMR and individual should be the opposite of angry when speaking or even eating food—remember the purpose of ASMR is to transmit a sense of relaxation. So, while recording sounds even though I wasn’t talking, while I was chewing, I attempted to make all my sounds smooth and flowing. One of the last tips I focused on while creating the ASMR sounds was my distance from the microphone. I learned that to pick-up better-quality sound, I must basically be touching the mic with my lips, if not the sound is not as clear. Sometimes I would have to restart a recording because I got too close to the microphone and accidentally hit it which created a thumping sound. As I went on to produce more sounds, the thumping happened less, and I could get through recording the audio quicker. In terms of editing the audio, I barely needed to touch the raw version of it. I used Finalcut Pro to adjust some of the levels of the, so the spikes were not overbearing, but other than that not much was done to the clips.

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Another role I had in the creation of our project was designing the background for inside the store. I created the shelves from scratch using shapes such as triangles, squares, and lines in Keynote. The reason for having to develop this by myself was because surprisingly it was tough to find images of empty shelves on Google big enough for what we were looking for. I felt that designing the shelf was quite simple and straight forward, but the biggest issue we ran into was actually formatting the shelving correctly to make sure all of the food items fit properly and looked aesthetically pleasing. After spending a day or two sending the code back and forth with my partner cutting, cropping, and adjusting the size of the image we were finally able to make everything work properly!

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Lastly, after my partner finalized the code, I was able to work on the design of both pages adjusting font color, size, style, etc. I also found and implemented some cute images of shopping carts to add to the buttons taking the user from the homepage and inside the store itself.

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In general, my partner and I reached all of the goals we set for our project. I think if we had more time to continue working on this project in the future we could add more sound clips and maybe even look at what types of different foods convenience stores (such as 7/11) around the world have in them and create sounds based on those foods and stores and then compare and contrast the similarities. I had a great time working with my partner on this project and overall learned a lot and had a lot of fun!

I think the central theme shared across each artistic example Lethem discusses in the reading that plagiarism plays an essential role in producing new and vital work for the society we live in. He further suggests that importance lies in artists and writers’ ability to reference each others’ work and to use each others’ foundations and ideas to advance society. When Lethem uses the word “plagiarism,” in my opinion, I do not believe he is suggesting that we take/use the entirety of creators art, rather I think he is suggesting we borrow pieces or aspects. Lethem believes that individuals should not be attacked by copyright infringement: “You attack the next generation of creators for the crime of being influenced. They make the world smaller”. From reading this article, you can understand the author firmly believes art is a part of our culture, and that it should be able to be transformed throughout time by anyone who chooses— to Lethem art is something that is meant to be used and reused. My main concern with his point of view is that the message or intention of the original piece of art that is in play to be reused might be decontextualized or lose its meaning along the way.

After reading this article I feel that I mostly agree with Susan’s argument. I think the biggest lesson I learned after reading the piece is that it’s important to understand the context of an image (or any piece of art) before rendering it or adjusting it. Users should take steps in understanding the meaning, purpose, and context of a piece of art before adjusting it. This is for the sake of the original artist and also the people or objects involved in the art. I think when Joy was sued by Susan she believed Susan only cared about receiving credit for the photograph she took, when in reality I felt that the most important issue for Susan suing Joy was that the meaning of the photograph was lost in Joy’s rendering of it. One thing readers should take away from reading this article is the importance of researching the history and context of a piece of art before rendering it to prevent complete decontextualization of the original artists intentions for the piece.