Hysteria!

My final project is really strange, and I don't truly understand it. I first became enthralled with the idea of adapting TS Eliot's poem, "Hysteria," in an abstract visual and auditory form. This poem, to me, encapsulates the feeling of being in love with somebody's laugh. From there, I realized the difficulty in expressing the warmth and romance of Eliot's poem. This led me to aim at capturing contagious laughter in an abstract form. So although I kept the title, the end product truly does not represent the tonal qualities of Eliot's poem.

Upon recognizing this, however, I recalled a moment in which my mom and I broke into hysterical laughter during an interview. I had audio! I spent two weeks recording different moments of conversation, but was unable to record an audio which effectively matched that from the interview with my mom. Rethinking my project once again, I realized that I laugh harder with my mom than I do with anyone else. So I decided to ultimately make this video honor a single moment in time.

The visuals are presented as stop-motion animation. I used bright colors against stark backgrounds and quick movement to compliment the tone of the recorded audio. I manipulated the visuals to match with the audio temporally. I do feel that this piece succeeds in capturing the moment in which this laughter was captured. But I don't think it is as accessible as I had hoped.

Wordsworth is not the Massage

Marshall McLuhan demonstrates a lot of his intellectual prowess through the use of other people's intellectual property. By constantly referencing and quoting historical figures who revolutionized the content of their own medium, McLuhan finds support for smaller arguments that he makes. However, each of those figures were most interested in the content of their productions and creations.

William Wordsworth is an excellent example of that truth. He revolutionized his own field of poetry by becoming a founding father of the Romantic Age of English literature.

I am a very research oriented individual and gained a lot from the experience of researching Wordsworth. I struggled a bit more in establishing a clear thesis that combines Wordsworth and McLuhan into one cohesive message. However, by spending enough time thinking about it, I realized that the two actually have less in common than one would initially assume. This helped me disprove McLuhan key argument once and for all.