NEW MEDIA: Creative Force & Flow

Kicking and screaming, I was dragged into the digital world of art, clinging to the classics and the old masters as being non-replicable in the odd world of computers.  I’ve learned a lot different.

I’m one who is anal retentive about original and hand-wrought.  It took me a while to accept photography as original art, since the camera just took a copy of what already existed.  Purist, or pure stubbornness against a changing world.

But just as my dad peeked over shoulders at computer screens, afraid to sit down and try it himself–though I know he desperately wanted to–I have that fear compounding my sensibilities about art and originality.  And though my dad lived his final three years with a computer likely doing naught but gathering dust, I have four that I love dearly and am not afraid of–at least of most of the programs I’ve learned.  So this past week, I’ve dared go exploring.

With a project in mind, it becomes necessary to seek out the method of presentation.  Working on a comparison of film versus text, I discovered Sound Recorder, embedding audio, working a microphone, and Media Player.  Well that was fun, and satisfying when it all came together.

But it led me down a new trail:  producing an a/v from scratch.  I’ve been sadly without all my mental abilities lately, so excursions into Macromedia Flash showed me I was way over my head.  I had a starting point–just pull out one of the poems in my files, and a mic to read it (though I really, really need a new sound card that allows one to adjust the bass), and images both on file and some new ones I could take with a digital camera.

So then it comes down to the process.  Would the technical interfere with the sublime?  Well, it looks like the technical can get pretty sublime when the kinks need to be worked out in a creative fashion.  In other words, it didn’t offend my artistic nature and in fact, taught me to organize even the most free-flowing ideas.  And, nothing got in my way.  But I would add here that on a serious project, a larger one with a purpose and deadline, I can absolutely see the value of a team working together over an individual attempting to wear all the hats.

New barriers to overcome in place of writer’s block.  Though I did have some experience with Photoshop to play around with images (on another forced learning through project, in Powerpoint a couple years ago), I’ve taken it farther with this move into this field. 

There are glitches, there are loads that I could have done better in this three-day effort of a one and a half minute movie, but the frustrations of Windows Movie Maker crashing the computer every five minutes and the relative unimportance of the piece made me want to move on rather than going back yet one more time (reminiscent of rewrites, yet in writing I’ll stick with it).  If I have the courage, and if Typepad will accept it here, I may post the finished product.

In the meantime, I just wish you could see my smug satisfied smile.