Category Archives: Student Blogs

Here is the link to my video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXnFJNsjo3g

For my first authoring project, I produced a video remix from footage of horseback riding in Skyrim. I obtained the footage from YouTube and used pieces of other players work to create my video, using iMovie. For the music, I used a portion of the song “Now We Are Free” by Lisa Gerrard. I decided to create this video for my project to show the freedom players have in Skyrim. In this game, the user is able to choose their character, chose different missions, and chose what the player can say to a character in the game. Skyrim is a fictional story which takes place in an time period without advanced technology, such as cars. Horses are the fastest mode of transportation. Horses symbolize freedom and allow the rider to travel quickly and fight. I chose the song “Now We Are Free” to symbolize the freedom created by the horse in Skyrim. While creating my video, I discovered that Skyrim has more freedom than I thought. I haven’t played Skyrim in a while, so I didn’t know that you can fight while riding a horse. With the freedom players have, I see Skyrim as a form of electronic literature. Skyrim is interactive with the user and the user can decide what to say or what to do. Many people may disagree with this idea, but no one can deny the endless possibilities Skyrim allows the user to chose.

Production Statement

     For my project, I chose to do a video/sound remix. I chose to use the game Saints Row 3 because it has a very open world feel to it. There is a main storyline, however I chose to take it from the point of an average man who mutilates zombies in his free time.

I started by ordering a specific RCA Female to USB cable called the EasyCap. What it allows me to do, is stream whatever I’m seeing on my Xbox straight into my computer. The cable only came in on Wed, so I have not had much time to learn how to get the best results. Still, this video turned out decent quality. I then played the game and choreographed the actions and movements that my character would do. After recording a solid chunk of video, I took it into WMM, (which for some reason had better quality than a more advanced software that I had.) and clipped much of the 10+ minute video away, leaving only things I wished to keep. Then I remixed the song on my MC software. The remix is done very poorly and I hope that this is not how people see my 9+ years of music education has paid off. I made it simple. The songs are “Golden Days” and “Big Boss.” After all this was done, I put them all together and synced certain elements with the sound.

The point that I was trying to get across, is that in a game where the main point is to take over a city and its crime scene, one could take a whole different approach. The player can live a normal life, living in a decent suburb outside of the city of Steelport. Then on a sudden change of pace, they can turn into a super hero and fly above the city, landing in a hostile zombie park and slaughtering everything that moves.

I learned that remediation can be very easily done, especially with today’s tech. This video shows an aspect of the game that was never meant to be the main point, yet has the ability to be a game on its own.

Saints Row Hero

There is No one central Text here!!

I have created a hypertext collage production that illustrates the mediation beyond the physical texts that I have chosen from American quotes and a short story. When confronting my collage I intended it to be looked at beyond the physical text and the focal point to be in the details between the lines of each image.  My theme in this production was the multiplication of space using conceptual imagery combined together with emotional sound to deliver a singular message per slide. I also chose to create this project as a way to show my own personal style of art in a slide by slide form so that each work can be appreciated in its individual element to promote the exploration of its intended interface. My hypermedia piece promotes the immersion of the readers’ thoughts and the interactivity of the imagination. I have learned from Lev Manovich that “the production of illusionistic representations has become the domain of mass culture and of media technologies- photography, film, and video.”Which in this case I have focused on images or photography combined with a layer of text and sound.

A collage I felt was a best choice to illustrate what I have learned because it came from the idea of “pulling the exterior into the interior” instead of isolating the illustration of each text to words on a blank page, so in that respect I highlighted heavy illustrational images with the text muted slightly so the emotion was stronger than the actual text itself. Electronic literature has been fun to create and really opens up the imagination I find.

By Heather Marsh

Ingrid Ankerson’s “Cruising” is an example of a born digital work.  This piece of electronic literature could never exist on in print, as it would take away from the fluidity that it has on online.  The fast pace pictures and auditory rhyming give Ankerson’s work  a sort of beat nick quality.  There is a quote in the text that articulates this point quite nicely “Computer-modulated texts (poetry machines, cybertexts) are a form of poetry that lives and breathes the fluidity of the electronic environment.  They highlight the dynamic production of text, turning this production into a spectacle.  Experiencing the text means watching words and meaning emerge and evolve on the screen.”  This is what it means to be a “born digital” work, electronic literature goes beyond the limitations of the text itself, as it tries include different senses and interactivity.  If one were to try to create “Cruising” on paper, it would fail, because the images would be static.  It would lack the movement and the rhythm that is has digitally.  One draw back to electronic literature is that it is giving you the narrative, and doesn’t let your mind imagine as fully as simple printed text does.  With a book or a poem, one is more free to interpret and imagine what they want, but with many forms of electronic literature, the narrative is more rigid as it feeds you text, sound, and pictures, that is specifically programed by the creator.  This form is interesting in how it can reinterpret literature and widen the definition, yet it still can never replace the authentic printed word.

Colleen Burke-ColleenBurke85

DTC Video Link

Production Statement

     For my project, I chose to do a video remix of the popular PC game Minecraft. I chose to do this game because I have personally spent time playing it and it was one of the only doable options with the video tech I have at the moment.

I started out by downloading the freeware Debut capture software, which captures video from on-screen. After I got the software, I chose to use the song Bass Head by Bassnectar. I thought this song would be an interesting way to change the gameplay from a simple, serene one to a more upbeat, frantic one. I played the song while I was recording myself on Minecraft. I moved to the music and performed various battles in the helicopter. Once I had enough film to work with, I used Movie Studio Platinum to mix the video together. It took a lot of splitting and cutting to get the pieces to work in sync with the music. I added gaps in the video to utilize the silence in the music. (which has a really cool effect in my opinion.) Then I saved it to my computer with the highest quality format I could have while still keeping the frame rate solid.

The point I was trying to get across is that; In Minecraft, the player usually carries out a very simple, calm lifestyle of building structures and mining for ores. Though there are some zombies and other creatures who attack you, the game is generally very low key. My remix put a harder feel on the game, with a lot of hype and attacking bass to invoke a new experience. To add to that, I included dancing and syncopation, bringing this 8-bit world to life.

I learned that every kind of media can be altered to have a totally different feel. Sometimes this is better than the original! I see no copyright on this video because both the song and game have been bought, meaning that I have the right to use it how I wish.