Cheyenne Díaz Blog

For my creative assignment, I decided to create 3 vector images regarding a cause that I am passionate about. I then put these vector images into Canva to create 3 t-shirt or sticker designs with 3 different slogans. I chose to center my theme on environmental conservation and workers’ rights in Puerto Rico. The Caribbean island has a long history of colonization and oppression of its indigenous people and native species of plant and animal life. I wanted my designs to shine a light on the efforts made in the past and today to preserve the island’s traditions, culture, and especially their diverse ecosystem. The first subject is a coquí, named after the distinct sound that the frog makes. In recent years, American and non-native tourists and modern-day colonizers have complained about the “noisy” frogs whose songs echo all through the night in Puerto Rico. They have even gone as far to call for the slaughter of these precious creatures. ¡Salven a las Ranas! translates to “Save the Frog...

Our Impact25 project was a very rewarding experience for both Mila and me. We are both from New York City, and have experienced New York in very different ways, so it was only natural that we would both want to center the city in our project. We were interested in illustrating NYC through the eyes of those who make the city run but so often do not have the platform to have their voices heard or visions seen.  We decided to use Google Forms as our medium through which we would collect information from participants. It is simple to share as well, which contributed to our goal of not making our participants feel like they were doing excess work. We narrowed our questions down to 3 simple questions in our form that could be answered in just a couple of minutes. It was also important that our participants remained anonymous, so we made it optional to collect their emails for follow-up once the project came to a close. Our Questions:  1. Describe your job in 30 words or less. 2...

Some of the first pieces of media that inspired me to pursue art were the films created by LAIKA such as Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings. After doing research and watching BTS of these films, I realized that I could become and animator and work on projects like these, and that animated films were not just confined to one category. Despite my over a decade-long appreciation for stop motion animation, this creative assignment was the first time I ever worked in this medium. I am very interested in redoing the stop motion assignment in such a way that I could integrate mixed media animation, taking aspects of video, scanography, photography, and even traditional means of making art with materials like crayon and pencil in particular.  I would like to expand my inquiry by developing an entire process from start to finish, including planning a story, storyboarding, and integrating aspects of video pre-production, like selecting music and dialogue or sound effects if applicable. I...

I opted to utilize the p5.js platform for my creative coding assignment. One particular reference that I found inspiring and helpful for my project was example code for live video capture. I utilized this post on Video Capture, which shows an active example on your screen when you start it. The invert filter applied reminded me of the Apple computer app 'Photo Booth' and inspired me to create a photo booth of my own. I love going to different types of photo booths, especially when I travel to new, interesting places. Seeing all of the different photo booths around the world and how creative they can get is so rewarding, especially since they allow you have a physical or digital record of your memories.  I researched how to create photo booths with the help of YouTube, and created a simple photo booth to take your picture and remember the lessons we've learned in New Media, New Forms, as a digital archive of sorts. This photo booth also operates as a game as w...

(1) Martinez and Stager assert that, according to Piaget, educators should “…provide students a learning environment grounded in action.” This philosophy is advantageous to not just the students, who are able to freely explore art through the active experience of making rather than the passive experience of being told concepts and techniques without meaningful exploration, but also to the educators. As educators, it is key that our students are not only learning new information, but synthesizing it and absorbing it for use later. This prevents students hitting roadblocks again and again because they cannot retain information that they have not actively engaged with. Similar to the importance of science labs for students to actually break down and analyze scientific concepts, laws, and theories, intentional explorational art education gives students the tools for comprehension and critical thinking. Open-ended, exploratory education grants students the agency to come to conclusions on t...

T ransformation and Surprise Continuing from last week's video assignment, I placed myself in front of the camera. The story is of a woman who finds beauty in the unexpected. It is about confidence and radical acceptance of oneself, going with the ebbs and flows of life as they come our way. Not only is she surprised to find herself decorated with flowers, but she fully embraces this metamorphosis-like transformation of herself, both inside and out. The process of this stop motion animation went by very smoothly once I had actually set up my camera and taken the sequence of photographs that I imagined I needed. The most difficult part of this process as a whole was the brainstorming phase. As someone who has never done stop motion animation before this, I had no idea what the capabilities of this medium were, and I anticipated a few difficulties going into it. For one, I had to decide to use my body and performance to convey my story as I had known that my camera setup would not a...

To me, video editing and digital collage have very similar qualities, as they both involve the process of taking a raw piece of media (a photo or video), and consequently cutting pieces, adding elements, and shifting it into something completely new and unique. These mediums are extremely valuable in classrooms, as they extend the possibilities for students to express themselves beyond spoken word, writing, and traditional means of making visual art. Video also allows for the aural senses to be appealed to, allowing for immersive moments and even more opportunities for further connection and communication of information, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Video creation in the classroom allows for cross curricular collaboration, or simply just creative exploration, as well as teaches students how to delegate tasks and collaborate in a creative production team setting.  I could imagine teaching video to middle and high schoolers as being extremely beneficial for their self esteem in ...

My video template comes from Troye Sivan's One of Your Girls . I am not a performer by any means, and the extent to which I am in front of a camera typically extends to making extremely casual videos about my day to send to my friends, so dancing and singing in front of my camera was a wholly new experience. In addition, it made me appreciate the entire production process as a whole, as I had to coordinate which scenes would be filmed in which outfits and film clips out of order, just to make sense of it later on when I put it together in iMovie. I figured out which zoom ins/outs were done by camerawork, and which were done with editing: small details like these have previously gone unnoticed all of the times that I've watched this exact music video. I also gained a deeper appreciation for how hard video editors work to piece together clips in a way that is continuous, consistent, and will not distract the viewer. My Video                ...