On this page you will find a collection of work produced during the class Art & Technology in the Classroom. Enjoy!
Makey Makey Video Game Controller
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For the video game controller, my design was to make a seashell since the player would be collecting seashells. The bottom of the seashell serves as the space bottom, while the other circles serve as the up, down, left, and right arrows. As seen in the video, the controller works with the video game. |
Scratch Video Game
Catching Rays & Catching Shells is the title of my created video game. For the game I remade a background that I found on the internet, created the character, created the crabs, and the seashells. I made the introduction music as well as converted a Beach Boys song into 8-bit for my videogame soundtrack. The concept of the game is to collect the shells for points but you have to avoid the crabs, otherwise you lose points. The player must use the left. right, up, and down arrow keys to move about the game. There are still some kinks that need to be worked out, but otherwise this videogame works well. The video to the right is a recorded version of me playing the actual game.
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Little Bits Project
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For the little bits project, I had a very hard time deciding what I wanted to do. I've used little bits a lot before as I own a large set and a synth set of little bits. I didn't have a lot to work with, so I used a light paper plate, duct tape, paint, hot glue, paper clips, glass pebbles, and yarn besides the little bits. I ended up making a rotating swing ride, similar to a carousel, that you would see at a carnival. I had to to a lot of work to get the motor to actually stay on the top of the plate to make the swings go round and round. I ended up being very happy with the outcome of the project.
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Erasure Project
For this project, I chose two very iconic photographs that most Americans my age or older would recognize if they saw them. I chose these two photographs because they both have one thing in common, tragedy. Both the World Trade Center attacks and the Kent State Shooting are horrible parts of our history, so, I decided to alter history in this instance.
World Trade Center- Falling Man Picture For the Falling Man picture taken on 9/11, I chose to erase the man. For me, this erases the pain from that day, the horror that everyone felt, the feeling of something so terrifying that you decide not to live. By doing this, this image becomes a very well taken picture of the structure of the World Trade Center as the composition is so linear. It was important for me to alter this image because I wish that day didn't happen. I wish that no one had to die that day. I wish for once, that we could pretend it didn't happen. Kent State- Shooting Picture The Kent State shooting is not something I was alive for, but I did a few major projects on it in high school. I've heard the song Neil Young wrote about the incident. None of it seems fair as these people were having a peaceful protest. For this image, I decided to erase the dead man on the ground. The image then becomes a woman in distraught but we don't know what about. She could be so emotion filled about the protest, it simply becomes ambiguous. Like the Falling Man erasure photo, it removes the pain and the tragedy that occured that day, even if it is just for a moment. |
Glitch Art
For my glitch art series, I focused on pictures of my husband and I that I adore. During the process for each one, I would place bits and pieces of important songs in our relationship, the date of our wedding, the words "I love you", as well as our vows. In the first image, the sunset on the beach, I added the lyrics to our first dance song three times. I also added "lovexxx <3" into the coding which drastically changed the picture. The reason I added "lovexxx <3" was because I wanted to see what the xxx and the <3 making a heart would do to the image since the lyrics didn't change it much. After adding a few more symbols, mainly *, I liked how the image had changed. There is a definite outline of my husband off the the side of him as well as a distinct color change to the photo.
For the second photo, I added similar words and symbols to the coding which made the image super pixelated. Its almost as if the picture symbolizes what a blur the day was because it went by so fast. I also like how the image almost has a distinct box around my husband and I, like there is a frame around us. The last image I did is a picture of my husband and I at a friend's wedding after we got married. Again, I altered the coding very similarly but in different parts this time and the result was very different from the other two. I kept going in and altering the coding of this one to see how far I could stretch the glitch. The clear part, the part of life that doesn't scare me, is the part with my husband, or in my eyes, life with my husband by my side. The rest of the image is blurry, discolored, and ultimately unknown. I don't know what the rest of life has to offer for him and I, but I know we will get through it with the support of each other. |
Stop-Motion Video
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During the course of the stop-motion video project, I took over 1,300 pictures and created a wonderful video within one day. An entire day filled with drawing the cut lines on the pumpkin, carving the pumpkin, moving the tools, creating the claymation, taking each picture, and creating the video itself took an entire day. This day I would do over again and again because it was so special to see one picture to create a whole video. Seeing the hundreds of pictures come together with music to create an amazing video was a very cool project. I learned that you cannot take the entire amount of photos and open them in the JellyCam software all at once or it might freeze your computer. Instead, one must open the pictures in chunks of 200-300 photos per chunk. Despite that setback, everything went swimmingly. |
Video game Sound Effects
For all of my sounds I used bfxr to create them. Each one is labeled for what it will be used for. For this project we had to have different wave sounds for each sound effect. I chose a few noise waves, a mixed wave, a pulse waves, a triangle wave, and a tan wave to make my sound effects. |
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Video Game Soundtrack
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For this project, I used a few sample sounds and then used pulseboy to create my own music. This soundtrack will be used as the start screen for my video game. The top track is for my start screen, the one a created. The bottom track is the soundtrack I will use for my game in which I converted to 8-bit. |
8-Bit Animated GIF
For this project, we had to make an image, alter it, then make a gif. I chose to do a beach image where the waves come forward and then go backward. I started with my basic image of the beach, very little waves, and then gradually added more and more waves to the image. Once I saved each individual image, I was able to make a gif by combining the images together. What you see on the right is my beach gif. |
Makey-Makey Project
For the Makey-Makey project, we had to design and make an instrument out of different waves of sounds that we created. We had to have four different wave samples that we made and then four of our choosing. The waves that we needed were pulse, triangle, noise, and sample. The ones of our choice could be any combination of the previously stated waves; I chose 4 more sample waves. My instrument of choice was a digital water drum-set. I made the frame for the drum-set and filled the "drums" with water. I then connected all the wires to the assigned key on the Makey-Makey board. This project was very interesting, especially when anticipating how it would work. I was so happy to see the project work with success. |
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Automata Project
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During the course of the automata project, I decided to go about things a little differently while making the gears. In the past I've only done the typical up-and-down motion that is created with a round mechanism on the wooden dowel, a bottle cap with weights, and a wooden dowel attached to the weights. This mechanism, like previously stated, only goes up and down. I decided to try something a little more complex this time and add a gear that spins. For this gear, I had one gear attached to the dowel, and one gear attached to a dowel. Both of these gears sync with one another to form a motion that spins 360 degrees. I went with a simple design for the automata itself, not knowing if the new model gear and old model gear would work together in harmony. I had originally planned to make someone running on a treadmill, but ran into many....many....troubleshooting problems, especially with the gears I was trying to use. So in short, this automata has one frog that doesn't move (despite many attempts to make the mouth go up and down). There are two "buzzing" flies around the frog that spin and go up and down as though they are flying around the frog.
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