I wanted to post the image above because when I saw this little dog with its sign, it reaffirmed my belief that no matter how big the opposition is, if you are standing up for what is right, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. I chose the sound of the huge crowd cheering to really drive home the point that even a single person, or in this case, a tiny chihuahua, with a profound mission, deserves all the encouragement in the world.
You shift the bags in your hands, freeing one to open the door you’re swiftly approaching. Leaning forward, you fumble into the handle, brow furrowing as you push with more force. All your effort earns you is the beginnings of a bruise on your forearm. You realize the door says “Pull”. One exasperated eye roll later and you defeat the barrier once known as door without a second thought. It takes you a second to register where you find yourself… Wait a minute, now that you think of it, doesn’t the mall have automatic doors? Where did that door take you? This is the opposite of the well-lit concrete desert of a parking lot that should exist here!
This is a taste of the eerie ambient terror that can be felt due to liminal spaces. According to Dictionary.com, liminal space can be defined as: a state or place characterized by being transitional or intermediate in some way. Liminal spaces are poised to easily become uncanny and uncomfortable the more transitional they are. For example, this image here showing an office building in transition between organizations; empty, but only briefly. You can see the lights in the building are on, but it looks dark outside, potentially during the transition from day to night, or the wee hours of the morning before daybreak. Being out and about during these times when most other humans are tucked away cozy in bed, or covering a night shift so things keep running despite it all, it can feel uncomfortable and eerie simply because it’s out of the norm.
Getting back to the image at hand, and that little yarn I was spinning about you…Can you imagine how disorienting it would be? To walk through a door and find yourself in this completely different place? And not only is it somewhere you’ve never seen, but it’s also at a weird time of day, not quite light or dark. There isn’t anyone around, at least not that you can see or hear. In the creepypasta subreddits people refer to it as “glitching out of reality” and finding yourself in “The Backrooms”. A few different video games have come out highlighting this particular brand of discomfort, if you’re looking to experience it for yourself…That is, if the audio I decided to pair with the image didn’t induce enough dread in you!
It’s the time of the year that everyone freaks out about– that’s right Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. I chose the image above because I love pop art! It’s always interesting to see how modern art remixes a well- known symbol and turns it into a pop- art icon that we all can appreciate.
So back to the elephant in the room. Valentine’s Day. Is it a holiday simply created to make us buy more chocolate? Or to show those around us that we care? I would argue a little bit of both. Jane Austen reminds us that ” there are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.” I couldn’t agree more. Friends, co-workers, parents, partners, we all share a little bit of ourselves throughout the years, which is far more important than any holiday.
I chose the track “Life is but a dream” to remind us that the time that we have on this earth is limited, and to reevaluate how we define love.
Life Is But A Dream by J.Lang (c) copyright 2022 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/djlang59/65522 Ft: Kara Square
When the mind is juggling around multiple things, the moist and the sound of an early morning rain calms us down. That’s how I came across the above image of the rain by amandabhslater and sound of the rain by Effib.
I was puzzled on what concept to write about for my media lab 2 and was indecisive for quite a long time. Sometimes, when I have the work undone, it will pop up in my sub-conscious mind even when I am asleep. When such thought arose one early morning, I also heard the sound of the rain and felt the moist near the window sill. In that sub-conscious, sleepy mode, I decided on looking and finalizing the image and audio about the rain and that’s what you all see here.
I have so many, varied experiences with rain. I have drenched to bone in rain, cried in rain, hated the rain, feared the rain; Rain gives me pleasure, it shows me the pain, it had made me miss someone terribly; it makes me clean, it makes me dirty, it clears up my mind and it confuses me. The day, the situation where and when it rains decides which mood its going to shove me into.
When I couple the above image of the rain with the audio, it gives me a flash of all memories and experiences, I had with rain in a second. I am uncertain if the image or the audio presented separately would give the same feel as we see it together. There is always a power when things come together than singularity.
When looking for images, I searched for an image that could be defined as interesting and alive, and when I saw the above photo, I knew I had struck gold. When looking at the picture, I could see it being a crowd at a concert, a rally, or even a group waiting for a speaker. The image provides the viewer with the chance to experience many different stories depending on the person you focus on in the photo, and that is what I loved so much about it. The viewer gets to see the images through their own eyes, not just the photographer’s.
My eyes went to the person with the phone. They are so focused and staring intently into what is being recorded that I imagined it being an exciting basketball game outside with loud commentary from the players. It reminded me of the times my brother would record basketball games and go home to dissect each play of the game we just watched because he enjoyed the game so much. Listening to the audio while looking at the picture brought back the feeling of being in that sports atmosphere during a very close game. It is a different feeling, an electric one.
So pairing the image with the sounds of an exciting basketball environment paired well to bring the story I chose to tell when I looked at the picture. I would like to hear from you about your thoughts! Share in the comments what thoughts come to mind when looking at the image. Do you see what I see or something different?
It’s early on a Saturday morning, you and your friends have been talking about the swell coming through all week, getting more pumped each day as the weekend approaches. You stop to get some coffee to fuel up before the long sessions ahead and then pull up to the spot. You hear the waves firing before seeing them as they pound against the beach. Cars start to pull in and your friends begin piling out, getting their wetsuits on and waxing their boards. The waves are glassy and ranging 3-5ft, perfect for long rides, carving, and party waves. We all leash up and enter the water, heading out the back to be in optimal position to catch waves.
Surfing alone is always therapeutic. Being out in the ocean with no one else around, you feel a connection with nature as you spot the occasional sea turtle or stingray passing underneath your board, or you allow the current to move you down the beach without a care of where you end up. Surfing with a group of friends though is an experience that is difficult to describe. There is no sense of time when you are all out in the water, boosting each other up if someone caught an incredible wave, and there is an extra sense of security in comparison to surfing alone. You are all out there to have an amazing time, but you are also there to watch each other’s back if something were to go wrong. When I think of my future surf trips, this picture of Surf School by Glenn Harper accurately depicts how my friends and I would show up to the beach, figuring out where we would need to head out for the best position and making sure that one of us has a watch on to keep some track of time. The music selection is Sound Reggae by Babylone temoins, as it was the best fit to emulate the laid back, simple lifestyle that surfers often have and brings the photo to life a bit more.
When I was a child, one of my fondest memories was going to the North Carolina Zoo. I had an obsession with Rhinos and wanted to see them in person. I was obsessed because, for some reason, I took their near extinction by human hands very personally. Like it was my or my family’s fault somehow. So I wanted to go and apologize to them in person. I spent the entire day begging my family to take us there so I could apologize to them. They pretended to understand. Eventually, we got there, and I was mesmerized. At that moment, I was taken out of the zoo and into the wild, where I could see them in their natural habitat. Of course, I knew this was a zoo and an enclosure made to resemble the wild, but in my mind, at that moment, it was nature. I gave them a heartfelt apology on behalf of the human race and then went about my day.
I was drawn to this image because I wanted rhinos in the wild without humans nearby to simulate what I felt. For the audio, I liked the sound of crowds because visually, I felt like I was in the wild, but you cannot escape the sounds of the crowded zoo surrounding you. To simulate the experience that I felt.
The image that I chose is that of a baby doll, peacefully sleeping in a shop window in Rotherham, England. One would have to look twice to notice that it’s not an actual real baby, but instead a toy doll. One immediate giveaway is the price tag attached at it’s hip. As a father of a four year old daughter, there are “sleeping” babies scattered about in every room of our house. Most days there is nap time where the dolls are carefully put in their “bed”, tucked in, before they drift off to sleep while listening to a calming classical Spotify playlist. I’m interested in how dolls can sometimes “come to life”, and acquire human-like qualities. The doll seems to not be concerned with the day to day commotion outside of the shop’s window.
I feel that the audio clip of someone snoring adds to the whimsical, playful attitude of the doll, while adding a real, human like aspect to the photograph. It reminds me of the many nap sessions that we have in our house and how in my daughter’s eyes, her dolls are much more than lifeless playthings. They have names, personalities, likes and dislikes, etc. They are her friends, sisters, and brothers, who all hold a seemingly important position in our family.
The photo by flickr user budak reminded me of a time in my youth where I began to learn about all the different types of animals and plants that lived around the world from the Discovery Channel. This particular image of the Four-lined tree frog seemed particularly enticing due to its vivid detail and the photographer’s point of view toward it. After adding the music created by Leo Granqvist (sector9000), I believe that it enhanced the photo by helping it to seem much more than a picture but to also place the viewer in the presence of the frog and its environment.
Who doesn’t love a good nap, where you wake up feeling refreshed, energized, and ready to finish off the day strong? A restful nap can make all the difference in how the rest of the day goes. And what better way to learn how to get in a little snooze than from the master. Red pandas – these amazing creatures are the best teachers on how to nap. If they are not munching on their favorite foods of bamboo and fruit or clambering through the forest, you can find them lounging in a nearby tree in the most comfy position possible. What can be learned from them? A nap can be taken any time, any where, and any way.
I chose this picture because of my love for red pandas. I stumbled across them a few years ago and fell in love with their awkward cuteness and hilarious personality. They are an endangered species and are currently protected from poachers who kill them for their fur. While I was scrolling through pictures of red pandas, I found this one which epitomizes their laid back personality, napping in their natural habitat. And what better audio pairing than relaxing music to help you fall into that zone for a perfect nap.
