Multimedia Projects
The following projects are initial attempts, playful experiments, toward realizing Talan Memmott's call for a critical hypermedia practice. Memmott argues for an expanded field of textuality beyond the word, to include visual and sound media. Memmott calls for more critical work produced in ‘hypermedia’ in the attempt to open doors to new and diverse critical methods:
The opportunity offered by the development of critical hypermedia is yet to be explored. Although the critical essay has not lost its place, power, and portability, I think a sharper critical understanding of digital practice may be gained from participation in digital culture…. For the critic of creative digital practice, it is important not to be just a tourist but to understand the significant opportunities within hypermedia for critical expression.... Similar to the individualized applied poetics of creative digital practice, an applied critical practice would not just invent deep theoretical and critical methods through an engagement with media technologies but allow those methods to live the temporary, nomadic, and applied lives that are so evident in creative applications.
Memmott, Talan. “Beyond Taxonomy: Digital Poetics and the Problem of Reading” New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss, eds. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2006, 305.
MATX e-portfolio theoretical introduction: abridged audio version
Created on a MacBookPro in Apple Garage Band 5.1 utilizing female basic voice, male basic voice, ambient vocals, and radio effects, to alter tone, pitch, and atmospheric effects.
Sound is not an element I generally utilize, and so for this experiment I wanted to isolate the voices from any visual component. I wanted to experiment formally, with layering multiple voices, and conceptually, with the idea of the chorus as a vehicle for a theoretical introduction. In reviewing the results of this experiment, technically, my oral recitation skills could improve, editing could be tighter and perhaps the effects even more subtly nuanced to give the impression of multiple voices (or perhaps just recording multiple voices!). Conceptually, I think there could be something worthwhile to explore here.
MATX e-portfolio theoretical introduction: abridged video version
Created on a MacBookPro using Camtasia 1.2.0 for recording and editing. Compressed to a MPEG4 video (quality medium, bit rate 6400 kb/s, 640 x 480) and uploaded to YouTube.
For the video experiment, I wanted to disrupt the expectation of sound as an integral component of video. The legibility of the text was also an experiment. In reviewing my initial attempt, technically, I have concluded that navigating Google Earth with finesse requires experience and a good mouse or perhaps drawing tablet, and my video editing skills could certainly benefit from more experience; conceptually, the loss of sound does focus my attention on the imagery and text, and so any disruptions, breaks from "good technique" should be used sparingly and need to be nuanced for the best unsettling results.
MATX e-portfolio theoretical introduction: abridged Flash version
Created on a MacBookPro in Adobe Flash CS4 v. 10.0.2. The photographs were taken along Route One between Baltimore, MD, and Washington, DC, with a Nikon D200 digital camera, and edited in Adobe Photoshop CS4. I have many ambitions for Flash animation, but I need to dedicate a considerable amount of time to learning actionscript code in order to achieve the results I am looking for in an animation piece. Here, I create a brief experiment with concealment and revelation of text within the flashing images.