final class / final project

so i got a little behind on my reflections towards the end of the year, and i was absent two weeks ago so i missed one. but last class we mostly just worked on our final project and this week we critiqued them. it seems weird that the year is already over, and it was great to see how everyones final piece came together.
that being said, i was pretty unhappy with mine. i think technicially it was pretty good. i used the sounds from our sound project to create a heartbeat and i tried within the first second to create a tense feeling. i think in this part i was successful. conceptually, however, i wanted to illustrate how racism is institutionalize and not just the act of prejudice, and i wanted to try to get my viewer to think about that. where i went wrong, i think , is that i approached it from my own understanding after studying this topic intensely for a semester. i forgot that in the beginning of the semester when i first dealt with this topic, everything i ever thought about myself and race was completely questioned and changed. i forgot that what i was trying to convey took me months to accept and to realize, so how could i expect that of my viewers in a mere short video, especially when they do not understand what i am trying to do in the first place. i think that i was just overly ambition and made my piece more about my understanding of racism rather then reaching the viewers in an artistic and thought provoking way.
thinking of it now, i think it would have been better to go about the issue in some sort of satirical or ironic way, that way i could show the viewer that the issue is still relevant, because in order for them to eventually accept that the problem is not individual but systematic they must first see their is a problem

reflections/final

ok so i know i missed a couple reflections but i promise i'll catch up. As for today, it was awesome to have the visiting artist talk to us, his stuff was amazing!!!! i LOVE how he had the installations all be illusions, the chair one blew my mind. Also, the two people eating at a table but are separated, to me that stuff is so beyond cool. That is the kind of stuff i wish i could think up of and would like to do.
also, we got to watch a couple of the animations and they were so good, its really impressive what people can do and i deff appreciate all the time and effort people put into things like that after just going through it myself.

as for my final project, ive been thinking about it a lot and i am just in artistic block! i LOVED rotoscoping and animating and i think that is something i would like to play around with, its just a matter of finding a concept to work well with it. i cant decide if i would like to do something funny or like deep and meaningful. i just don't no. i still want to focus on the psychological aspects of race relations because it is something that fascinates me and is meaningful. Also, i am going to be starting the process of writing a like 15 page research paper on race relations and it literally is going to own my life, and i want to put as much time into the final as i can but the research paper is also my final, so at least if im doing the same topic i can kinda do research for both at the same time and save myself at least a little bit of stress.
the focus for my paper is about colorblindness, and how people just choose not to deal with race because most people grow up in a homogenous area, thus this leads to the notion that racism does not exist and the problem does not get solved. so i guess the question is, how can i expose the colorblindness amongst SU students in an artistic way? i think to just at least start things off i will survey and interview students and then maybe see where that leads me. I feel that for this project it will develope as i actually start to do work with it so i'm kinda just goning to roll with it i guess. I no i don't want my project to just be like a documentary type thing, but maybe i can take what people say and general ideas and somehow manipulate them.
i dont know, im really struggling with like a actual way to go with this, and maybe that is becuase i'm struggling with the topic, its a tough topic and my race class has been really tough and challenging. basically this semester the class has taken eveything we as white students have known about ourselves and relationships with others and completed challenged and destroyed what we thought. but that is why i've loved it so much and want to somehow give people who see my final project this same idea, i want it to challenge people and make them question things like this class has done for me