Valerie Ervin: Art & Technology

  Taylor Swift- the innocent girl with the blonde curls turned into the woman who can't seem to keep a man, and will write a song about him once they breakup. While only 29 years old she has managed to create and maintain her image in the public eye since she was a teen, and she released self titled debut album. For her, there was no going back after that. Her career has only gone up (some may argue) from there. Although, the girl who released catchy country songs in the early 2000's has drifted away from her roots. Taylor has transitioned now to a more "pop" look, and with her new album, has released some darker tunes as well, per "look what you made me do". The way she has managed to stay relevant, even during tumultuous times, is quite impressive. She has even shifted her style to appeal to the masses, a technique that also keeps her relevant, I believe. It is almost as if Taylor herself grew up alongside her fans. She started off as a young girl singi

For this piece I drew inspiration from Hannah Hoch. She was a female dadaist around the 1920's and she created abstract collages by manipulating reality. She would take part of people (from pictures), such as faces, hands, feet, and would manipulate them to form a new person. I tried to emulate this by taking my face and putting it onto a scuba diver. I thought it was a fun and quirky way to incorporate myself into this piece. While I may be smiling in this picture, the message I tried to convey isn't so. With pollution being such a big problem on a global level, I decided to put in "fish" made of plastic. This highlights how much our oceans are polluted and eventually, with all the plastic in the oceans, we will be diving with plastic fish. This project was really fun, and I enjoyed working with photoshop- I thought it was easy, and I'd love to work with it again. *7 pictures used: relaxed diver, my face, fish x5, background (ocean)

For my grid art I chose to create a watermelon as a nod to summer, although it hasn't "officially" started. To create this piece I made a template for myself using Google Docs. This helped me visualize the colors I would use and served as an overall outline when it came time to lay everything out. The medium I chose to use was pain chips (thank you Sherman Williams). I chose paint chips because, they come in a variety of colors so I was able to find the shades that I felt worked best, and they're also very easy to manipulate, seeing as I cut my into fourths so I didn't need as many. When it came time to layout the paint chips I chose to lay them down on carpet. I tried to do it on a table, but there was no grip to the surface so they kept sliding all over the place. My grid is 15x15, I have to note though, that I did fall short on some of the blue chips for the background. Overall, I really enjoyed this project. It required more thinking than your everyday ar

My initial thoughts when watching this opera were 1.) pleasantly surprised it was in english, 2.) was not expecting it to be filmed like a movie and 3.) the costumes, sets and effects all went together well. I actually really enjoyed watching this opera and the fact that it was in english and I was able to follow along with it was a bonus. When broken down, it is a pretty easy story line to follow. However, when all the other elements are added in the story can get a little difficult to follow. To break it down for you, it is simple-  Queen Dido falls in love with Aeneas after he flees from the trojan war, some witches who live in Carthage interfere, with the help of Mercury, remind Aeneas that he has to go and will eventually take over the Roman Empire. His abrupt departure leaves Dido heart broken and she succumbs to her emotions and ultimately kills herself. While this is a tragic ending, I honestly thought the way it played out was carried out extremely well. Back to the start

Sharing files was never as easy as it currently is. It literally happens instantly, but its also come a long way to get to this point. Everything starts from nothing and file sharing is no exception. Way back when, file sharing consisted of snail mail- the physical act of mailing something to your chosen recipient. Whereas today with the highlighting of a few names and the click of a button you can share anything you want with however many people you choose, and they'll get it that second (sometimes a little slower depending on service/WiFi, but that's another i ssue). Sharing files is a crucial part of the internet, and almost without it you would have no real purpose for it. Essentially when you think of the internet in its simplest form everything consists of file sharing, just in a more public domain. Not everything on the internet is yours or mine, thus everything has been publicly shared for everyone to enjoy. I think the biggest jump in file sharing happened starting

This the stop motion that Avery and I collaborated on together. I personally really enjoyed this project because, I felt like it allowed me to be super creative. I enjoyed brainstorming ideas for the story as far as what we wanted our stop motion to look like. After spending quite a bit of time thinking about what direction we wanted to go with this project we came up with.. cookies. While this isn't a perfect stop motion, I think it came out pretty well. Some aspects were more challenging than others, such as keeping the camera still, making sure to not get arms in the pictures, and opening and closing the oven door. Our cookies made the journey from package, to pan, and finally to oven, and I think the music was a nice touch. Overall, this project was really fun and I enjoyed putting everything together.