When I first began thinking about this assignment, it took me a while to decide on something I believed in. Granted, I have a lot of beliefs, but for some reason nothing came to mind for a while. Everything I thought of seemed too common (I thought everyone would do something similar) or very abstract. I was not sure how I was going to make something visual or material of something that I barely felt I could explain. Tried as I might to do something different, in the end my mind kept coming back to my struggle with panic attacks. But how does someone create that visually? It was something I had wrestled with mentally, and I wanted to show that wrestling, instead of showing what a panic attack actually looked like. I wanted to show the internal side of it, the mental part I hated. I hated feeling out of control. I hated feeling not like myself. I am a sane person. I am in control. But in moments of panic attacks I felt out of control, and not like myself at all. I did not understand why I could not handle certain things. I could not understand why my body could not go to these limits that I thought I could handle. I held myself to this high level (I now realize it is an impossible level of perfection) and when I did not reach it, it only made my decent into panic worse. It truly felt like these two sides of me were present, who I thought I was and then who I became through my panic attacks. But how does someone show that visually? I thought of doing something with pictures or something, but the more I thought about it, it seemed the best way to show this abstract feeling I had was to create an abstract form of art. I had always wanted to try to make something along the lines of advant garde film, so I decided this would be a great opportunity to try it out. My brother was actually the one who gave me the song I ended up using, and then everything flowed pretty easily from there. By switching between black and white video and then color, I hoped to show a difference in feeling or personalities that I felt between myself and my panic attacks. I wanted the movie to feel a bit jarring and not straight forward, because that is how I felt in regards to this part of my life. In the end I felt that I did a good job of translating this feeling I had into something that maybe some people could understand or at least feel something from. Even if they felt a little confused, then in some way they were connected to how I felt, because often times I felt confused and unsure as to why I had to deal with having panic attacks. Even though I was not too sure at the beginning of this project, in the end I felt I displayed a belief I had, even though it was hard to put into words. I was able to create something visually that people could connect to, and also that communicated something close and personal to me. I really enjoyed this project and that it stretched me to do something different and incredibly personal to me.
Would you like to play a game? http://philome.la/Ken_Ko14/the-game-of-life---provo-edition My issue that I wanted to address in my Game for Change was that of cultural expectations and experiences here in Provo, Utah. My experience, as well as the experiences of others I have talked too all seem to be oddly similar. In talking to people you tend to hear the same stories. You hear about the horrors of dating, being cast out because you have not served a mission, and the crushing need to be perfect in a religion that preaches that we cannot be perfect, but should strive to do our best. It seems that in the church we are often taught one things and then in practice that is lost, or members do not reflect that teaching. I know the subject I wanted to tackle has many different veins and variations. In the end I do not think I even came close to reflecting all of the different situations that people struggle with, but I hoped to in a way do it som...
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