Pieces of Inspiration
For James Grady’s Fall Senior Studio class, we were given the opportunity to collect one piece of research each week and then create a final Research Video on a topic of our choice.
Me being me was unable to focus on one topic. So, I chose to capitalize on the idea that I draw inspiration from each person in my posts. My choice of artists ranged from those focused on AI (Alexander Chen) to artistic filmmakers (Tyler Mitchell). Then beyond just artists, some of my posts went from a neuroanatomic (Jill Taylor) to a YouTuber (Julia Dang). Although initially extremely broad topics and something that was daunting when beginning this project, I am proud that I stayed true to what I got out of this research project and weekly research post within my final piece: another puzzle solved and a wide range of creatives to look up to.
The puzzle I “solved” was synthesizing the main topics within each research post I found most inspiring. A rough web of topics that flowed through the research posts consisted of: maps, research, science, people, design, and emotion. After some curious googling with search words such as: “emotions”, “mapping”, “people”, “emotional mapping”. I was able to stumble upon two articles that made everything I was researching make sense. One was a study that discovered 13 overarching emotions that were a common theme across cultures for music. The other study was looking at bodily maps of emotions, through body temperature. Although extremely interesting articles, it was too far of a stretch from the purpose of this project. So, with the help of James, I took the aspect of the colors and structure from the studies and implemented these as the structure to the visuals within the Research Video.
The research video is dedicated to each person and is highlighted through a quote as well as any visual associated with the person. Then I topped the video off with a voiceover to add more context and some lofi music that almost makes it feel like a YouTube video. Enjoy!
I chose to work within AfterEffects for a fun challenge, that I later regretted after realizing how daunting of a task it was to finalize the piece the way I had envisioned. But even though the final product was not something I was expecting, it was fun to play with the software and see what new features I would find out.
Overall, this project was like a fun research design exercise piece! And I hope to explore these topics more within my own work and see what other connections I can find.
