For Part 2 of Project #2, you will let Beloved inspire you to get creative. I encourage you to try something new, or to hone your skills in any medium that interests you. This need not be tech-involved, other than posting the finished product on our site. I’m including in the comments below a few ideas I’ve had that I’ve discussed with some of you, but this is not an exhaustive list (if you have questions about any of these ideas, reply to my comments). Keep in mind that some of the examples below would involve the very minimum level of involvement–it would be up to you to make it something more involved to keep to the goals of the assignment.
In your comments below, describe what your approach will be. In another comment, suggest another way of approaching Part 2. Think about what you might dream of doing if you had the tools, time, or skills to make it happen. Maybe another classmate can help, or can benefit from your imagination. Sometimes dreaming big can help you shape what you’re able to accomplish more realistically. Let inspiration and creativity guide you.
Remember that you will need to write about your creative interpretation of the event, moment, scene, or passage, so keep track of what you did and why!
Finally, remember that your draft of Part 1 of Project #2 is due Sunday night. Homework will involve commenting on these drafts–more information to follow in my Homework Instructions post. When you post your project draft, please use categories Project #2 and draft. Use any tags you find appropriate.
Borrow from the idea of concrete poetry–poetry written in the shape of something–to arrange your passage on the page in a meaningful way. Look at some examples https://www.google.com/search?q=concrete+poetry&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=qew3VezVGsSvyASsjIFI&ved=0CEQQsAQ&biw=2106&bih=1222
wordle.net: use this to help you create a word cloud of the passage, multiple passages, the whole novel. Make choices about design to reflect themes, mood, tone, etc.
http://www.eddeaddad.net/ediastic: Borrow from poetry some more: use the idea of a diastic, a process of creating a smaller text from a larger text using a line from that larger text and looking for words in the larger text that correspond with the letters in that line. You can even use an eDiastic automatic generator. Choose a line that is important in the moment in Beloved you’re writing about, and add that in as the seed text, then paste in the entire novel from the full text, and let the site generate a text for you. Once you have it, you can arrange what those words should look like on the page. In your curatorial comment, you’ll have to say more about it than “I used a machine to make this”–that is, you’ll want to think of what it does, or how it represents your line in the context of the novel.
If you have programming skills, is there a short program you want to write to do something interesting with the text? Think about it if you have that ability!
unphotographable.com (check out the archives for more examples http://unphotographable.com/archives.html): think about using language from the text to help you tell a photograph that wasn’t taken.
mashups: use different images or audio files to create a mashup that depicts your moment/event/scene/passage. Make sure that you use files (visual, audio, video) that are available for reuse at no cost. Check out this help material for more information: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/blog/help/following-copyright-guidelines-for-images/
I was thinking of drawing a scene from the book that left a vivid image in my mind.. but I am honestly a bit confused about this. Do you want us to take the quote we chose in part 1 and change it into a different form of art (photograph, poem, painting?)
The assignment is open for you to create in whatever medium you want. If you want to draw, it should reflect a particular passage. If you don’t have drawing skills, you might do something with the words themselves. In either case, your work should express something about the ideas, mood, tone, themes, etc, represented in the scene.
I am juggling between writing a poem that depicts the main point or the pivotal scene in my essay OR making a collage of images to represent the main point or the pivotal scene in my essay. However, I am unsure if I can look at other poems to get ideas. I will not copy their work but would get a better understanding of how a poem should be written. Professor, If you have any suggestions, please reply.
Now concerning with other creative ideas for part 2 of project #2, If I had more time, I would have brought paint and artist painting paper to paint the pivotal scene that I am discussing in my essay.
Painting would be great, but certainly time is a limiting factor. You can definitely look at other poems–poets read each others’ work all the time. When you write your gallery note, you can give credit to the poets or poems that inspired the format you chose.
I’m still deciding on what to do for part 2. My choices include either drawing a scene or comic picture, taking a high quality picture because a picture is worth a thousand words, an android app, or as a last resort, a poem or haiku although I am not the best when it comes to writing those.
You shouldn’t feel that you can’t try something new, and challenge yourself to experiment with a different form of writing. But if you have a skill set that you want to showcase, please do! I like the idea of expressing the scene as a comic picture–could you do a series of frames as you would see in graphic novel?
Taking a photograph could work, but it would be difficult to create the scene that you want–what would you have in the picture?
I’m thinking of using a photograph or poem that can depict the scene that I’ve chosen. A picture or a painting can evoke as much emotion as written words.
As I’ve written to AldayA1211, it can be difficult to stage a photograph to contain exactly what you need it to have. A collage of photographs might help you get the right elements together. A combination of words (poetry, for example) and images could work very well. These are just a few suggestions.
I’ll most likely write a poem for part 2. The idea of concrete poetry seems like a great way to depict the scene that I’ve chosen for part 1.
You can also think about creating a series of concrete poems, using a few different passages and different shapes for the poems.
I’ll probably do a mashup for my scene. I remember doing a shoebox diorama for another book i read in high school. I was thinking about doing that if I had more time.
For the mashup, are you thinking about video? audio? A diorama can depict a scene well, but I wonder if it aims more for a direct one-to-one connection with the scene, rather than a creative one. That said, a 3-D model using software that is available to students in certain majors at City Tech could be a great way to merge tech skills with creativity and reading skills.
I am thinking of using photograph or picture which can depict the
scene that I am writing for my project part I. I hope I can find the best picture that match my pivotal scene.
I think it will be difficult to find a photograph, and I don’t know that just finding a photograph is doing enough to show your creative expression. If you were to find a photograph, is there a way to overlay it with words from the passage you’re focused on? To create a mashup of words and the image? And to everyone looking to use images, be sure to look for images that give you permission to reuse them!
I still haven’t come up with an idea on what exactly what I want to do for part #2 in Project 2. Hopefully if I am, I will try to relate it towards my major to have a greater interest or understanding of the book. However, if not I will try my best on creating something towards the scenes I have written for Part 1.
As we discussed in my office, it can be interesting to think about using passages and/or the text of the entire novel as a data set, so you can think about ways to process that data–as I imagine CST majors are skilled in doing. I encourage anyone else to think about ways to represent the language of the scene or of the novel as a whole through techniques that process word frequency, word correlation, etc. I don’t know that this is something you feel comfortable taking on–just a suggestion.
for part 2 of the project 2 i am planning to do one of the major scenes that impacts sethe life. i was planning on doing that scene the same way you linked in the first comment. i am not sure what design i am planning to do yet.
It’s obviously vitally important to choose an image that depicts some aspect of the text. It’s also important to think about how the text fits in the image, how it works as a poem with line breaks that you will add to make the passage take your chosen shape.
I liked the suggestion of an unphotographed moment. I read a bunch of them and think it’s really creative.
I’m not sure if ill describe a scene, or maybe might write and unwritten paragraph.
I wonder if there’s a way to create a scene through a series of images and unphotographable paragraphs. I wonder if thinking of it as a page in a graphic novel would help you think about how to sequence images and unphotographs.
Currently i am still not sure about the exact scene I will use in project two and there are a few sections that I still need to reread for better understanding that I find interesting and would be valuable for the project. Regarding this project, does part one and part two have to focus on the same scene or can it be two separate scene, one for the essay and one to illustrate the story?
I used quotes from 3 scenes in part 1. I will be using a scene from one of those quotes.
Ideally, they would work together. The thinking that goes into working on Part 1 can help you in Part 2. If you want to use more language than what you find in Part 1, or sections of the scene that you didn’t actually include as quotations in Part 1, that’s fine. But it wouldn’t really work to pick something unrelated, since the goal is to get you thinking creatively about the material you’ve spent time thinking about carefully.
I am thinking of using the concrete poetry method. Since I do not draw well another method I was considering is using cartoon images to depict my pivotal scene.
I wonder if there are programs or websites that will illustrate for you–does anyone want to look into this? Animation can work, but you want to make sure that the tone of the animation fits the tone of the passage or the work you’re creating.
I would prefer to express my pivotal scene in a form of a picture or a drawing that can be done by hand or computerized. I believe that using a picture is sometimes hard to pass over a message but usually the meaning will be deep and powerful.
I think we expect an image to be universally understood, but I don’t know that it’s so true. The gallery note you’ll write can help provide that context, but the idea of bringing some language from the scene–either important words, or phrases, or sentences–into the image can help guide the audience through your piece.
Good day, being inspired by Paul D role. I would like to depict an image of his bitter mouth with his hand, on Sethe back with lashes that resemble a tree. Along with a poem to describe the scene and what Paul D have been through. Paul D character role was vital due to the fact that he remain calm and was one of the hardest worker. He worked so hard, he was promoted to butcher cause he was trusted.
I debating between three things, using a picture, drawing a picture, or writing a poem for the scene I used in part 1. Is making a song an option? Just throwing ideas out there.
Making a song is definitely an option, particularly if you have that skill! You can definitely shoot video of you performing a song, or if you prefer, you can share the lyrics, or even sheet music if that’s the kind of thing you want to do.
In class today, we discussed a few other options, so I’ll add them here separately.
One idea was to create a palimpsest, using one text as the underlying text and another as the prominent one. Do a Google image search to get a sense of what a palimpsest looks like, look for a definition of the word, and choose your texts. Keep in mind that the texts could both come from Beloved, or one can come from another source, or even be written by you (that would be great!). Get creative with the medium used to depict the texts. One could be a photograph of a text, and the other could be written over it. Or you could imagine making a small book of these. There are many possibilities!
Another idea that came from thinking about two texts crossing each other, existing in the same space came from my suggestion that we look at some of Susan Howe’s poetry. We did a Google image search for Susan Howe (remember, when we tried in Yahoo! we didn’t get the same results). Some of her poems use the page creatively, setting different lines in different directions and having some words overlap. Rather than randomly doing this, you might think about what meaning there could be for some words to go in one direction and others to go in other directions. Would this be how you would represent a single passage? Two passages talking about the same event? Many different moments in the text?
As I was thinking about these ideas and about overlapping texts, words blocking out other words, I remembered another project I really love, called A Humument. Tom Phillips bought a book very cheaply and turned it into a work of art. The book was called A Human Document, and he turned each page into a combination of sketch and poetry. You can look at his official website, http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument, and also do a Google image search for A Humument. Think about creating an image–what would that image be?–and then think about creating it on top of a page of text–what page would that be?–and then think about what words or pieces of words you would let show through so you could make a poem out of the parts of the text that show through your sketch. I used this project in another class of mine, and students did some great work–so can you!