CCA Confidential

Dr. Conner looked pissed. Near the end of class on Wednesday, she handed back the midterm exams. With no small amount of frustration in her voice, she explained that only three or four students passed the essay portion of the exam, and consequently she had to through out the entire section.

She paced up and down the room, asking us what we think may have happened. Dr. Conner had two theories:

1. The question was too confusing or complicated
2. None of us knows how to write an essay

And she was leaning more toward number two, which was slightly insulting. How can a class of 25 people be completely filled with English imbeciles.

I wish I could explain what happened, but I don’t have any ideas. In fact, I was one of the people who did well on that portion of the exam. But silly me, on the second essay question I choose option B to write about (the harder one) and bomb it. So Dr. Conner just threw out my second essay and kept my first one ~ the inverse of everyone elses exam.

If I’d only answered the easier essay question, I’d probably have an A, but instead I have a B. Which is exactly the grade I thought I’d receive:

http://www.ccaconfidential.com/2007/10/10/first-cca-midterm/

Ok, I admit part of my frustration is self induced. But come on…

It all started in 4D Visual Dynamics (those of you who have been reading along are probably not suprised), today being one of our now infamous field trips. During our last field trip our professor completely changed the location the night before and sent out an email at 9:30pm. A third of the class didn’t check their email that morning, and went the wrong place. I was not one of those unfortunate few, but it seems fate had it in for me this time.

Our trip was to the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) and I also had to stop at Tap Plastics, so I planned a two stop route. After picking up the acrylic I need from Taps, I drove over to BAVC arriving 2 hours ahead of schedule. No problem. There was a Star Bucks next door with a big window facing the entrance to the BAVC. I had my note book with me, so I simply waited and studied for my midterm in Intro To The Arts.

Melissa and Wilson showed up, and we sat and chatted. The agreed upon meeting time, came and went, and we all just thought the main group was running late. After an hour, we were all about to leave, and I had the clever idea of checking to see if the group some how got into BAVC without any of us noticing. Wilson went and checked, just in time to for us to hear the end of the tour. I still don’t know how they all slipped by, and how they didn’t see a large group of us sitting in the Star Bucks window seats.

On my way back to campus, I got a little lost, and I also found out that one of my classmates had went to Creative Reuse and bought out all the slides. My 3D Dynamics midterm group project is entirely based on recycled slides, and my group was counting on buying all our supplies from Creative Reuse. What is more, they charge the other person half what I paid, and gave them three times the amount. Basically, I got screwed.

Professor Lee is awesome. She felt so bad for my ground she called around, and found another store that has a small about of recycled slides. So my entire 3D group jumped in my car and I drove us all over to Berkeley to go to Urban Ore, only to get lost, and the store closed before we could get there. We will go back on Saturday to get what we can. But our project will not be the same; it will have to some poor mirror of our original plan.

This 3D project has been the only thing I have really been excited about making all term. I ll do a full write up and post pictures of it in process on Saturday.

Update

O, and I forgot, I got my grade back for my rectilinear form. I would have received an A, but I had to recoat my form with white gesso, so I was docked a full letter grade!

It is 3:27 and I have been sitting in the computer lab B on campus for hours editing what film I have for my video project midterm in 4D Visual Dynamics. I am really unhappy with this project. I am not going to like the final short.

While editing the clips, I found my mind wandering and wishing we and chosen the other topic, to film a child hood memory. This wandering sparked a very earily memory of mine.

When I was about 3 or 4 years old I had a currly haired stuffed bear.  He was soft and brown. One day I left him on an end table under a lap while I went outside to play. When I came back he had a huge burn mark on the top of is head. The lap was so hot, it caught his hair on fire.  Now that would be a cool student art video.

All we’d need is a teddy bear from the second-hand store, a safe place to film, some rubbing alcohol, and a long match.

Wish I might…

I am taking time out from my usual blather about my daily life as a design student at the California College of the Arts to focus on something bigger. And while I can never hope to change a thing on my own, today happens to be Blog Action Day, the one day a year when thousands of bloggers speak up on a single topic. This year Blog Action Day is focused on the environment.

For those of you who haven’t watched any of TED’s talks, I highly recommend it, there is something there for everyone. I’ve watch almost all of them, and they have made a large impact on my thinking.

Here is one that really effected me as a designer:

Chris, my 3D Visual Dynamics instructor, has been challenging us to think through the entire life-cycle of objects we design; not just who uses it and can they recycle it, but how much energy and resources are need to make the object, how much to use it, and how much to recycle it.

As designers I think this is where our power lies, in the ability to change what materials are used, how things work, and where they go long before the customer interaction.

The San Francisco AIGA has a biannual design competition rewarding designers who help their communities. The competition is called Cause/Affect.

Student submissions are only $20, and they have categories for just about everything. Basically you can submit any work that is for not profit or community support.

The deadline for submissions is 11/9/07.

You can also read the competition blog at: http://aigasf.org/causeaffect/blog

Uog the rain! Today is not going well. My video group had planned to shoot over most of today, but it’s too rainy to shoot outside, and neither the Academy of Art nor the Art Institute of California would allow us to film in their lobby. But first we trudged around in the rain for a couple of hours trying to get people to let us film.

Add to this, our group member Astro has failed to show up to every filming.

So we have no new footage, one person down, and not much time left.

At CCA, 4D Visual Dymanics is a studio class, so there isn’t an exam, instead we have a large group project. The class has been given two weeks to, think-up, shoot, and edit a 3 minute (minimum) video piece. Each video team is made of three people.

My group consists of:

• Melissa
• Astro
• Myself (Daniel)

Each group can choose from two possible topics:

1. Document a community (This can be anything from a single elderly person in China Town, to a group of friends who play scabble every Thursday night). Obviously this assignment is meant to be highly narrative.
2. Recreate a childhood memory.  This topic is for those people want to do something none narrative.

Originally, I wanted to do a childhood memory; the community topic sounded a little boring. But when I found out we’d only have two weeks to learn the software, shoot our scenes, and edit our project, I quickly changed my mind.

After brainstorming for an hour or two my group hit upon the idea of interviewing art students at all the local art schools. We would then edit all the scenes together to show how all the students are really the same; we all want to make good art, think school is too expensive,  and have big dreams for the future.

Our first day filming was last Friday, and Milessa and I went out to the Academy of Art on New Montgomery to try and interview some students there. It wasn’t easy. I think we had to ask 10 people for everyone one person who said yes. After two hours we had six interviews.

Early this week I took a look at the tape, and it’s all messed up. The first two interviews we didn’t use a directional mic so the background noise is awful, and on the fifth interview our mic kept cutting out. But the real problem came when I tried to capture the footage in iMovie and Final Cut.

First I tried iMovie, and the program just kept crashing. I think I sent 3 hours trying to get 15 minutes of tape. Frustrated I moved to Final Cut, which is what the pros use. Final Cut gave me a million warnings and I had to fetch tech support of the media lab. After another 2 hours it seemed like things were finally working, but we probably won’t be able to use any of the tape we have shot.

As it stands, I have until October 18 to complete my groups project, and I really don’t know how I am going to do it.
Today we are going to film CCA students, and tomorrow we are going to the Art Institute of California. If we have time, we might even head back to the Academy of Art and try to refilm our old interviews.

If you see us around, say hi, and maybe volunteer for an interview.