it's the FINAL countdown

Sorry this is so late, my computer crashed late Wednesday night and I still had my finished work on there, so I had to get my hard drive backed up by a company near Polaris that oddly enough does not think a student needing their laptop finals week is a big deal.
This is really hard for me to write now, because before I saw the work of everyone else in the class I thought I had created something truly unique. I wish I would have done something cooler with the documentation process because the projects where you could watch them develop were most often my favorites.
I developed a deep fascination with Rorschach tests after doing this project. I think the thing I find most interesting about them, is that after further research I learned that the actual image itself isn't even the main point of the process. It is more about the viewers response that says something about who they are as a person. I think that is why I picked images of myself in events that were memorable to me, because I think there is a really interesting play between events that occur and how other view them. The best why I can describe it would be a gay couple kissing, and to some people it could be a beautiful display of affection yet to others it could come off as totally disgusting. I think the saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder holds true into everyday situations. I may have been "living my life" in some of these situations and the connotations I associate with them could be completely different.
The red image is from a high school football game where we dyed our own shirts, and looking back now I thought it was so great and amazing to be with all my friends and show great school spirit, but what about the girls who weren't included? How did that make them feel? Do they then see these happy images as a time of when the felt ostracized?
I think the beginning stages of this project was really hard for me, yet as I look back on it, I still think the ideas behind my project is really interesting. It has hard for me to toe the line between simple and something that took the image completely out of it's element. I had originally planned on even blurring the photos but I remember thinking then that the point became mute if I did that. However now that I've had time to think about it, the blurring or lack thereof only has meaning to me, because I am the only one who was in those events. The "viewer" is witnessing completely foreign images, that emit no form of emotion to them per say unless they images remind them of events in their lives.
I mean it is such a strange feeling to think that these pivotal moments in my life, that have had such an impression on me, don't resonate any feelings or emotions from outside viewers. Which goes back to the Rorschach tests and the idea that the emotions we feel when viewing something have often very little to do with the image itself.
This is where my passion for art comes from. With a poem or book the reader feels the emotions that the writer wants them to fell. With words the writer is able to present emotions to readers through a common language. Sad means sad and the definitions are in black and white when with art it is not the case. I photo of a baseball, even if it is painted in dark somber colors could mean a time of happiness to someone, a time when they spent all day playing a sport that is their passion because to them the dark colors could reflect night time. But to someone who never had someone to throw a ball with, or was never allowed to play sports that image could resonate feelings of neglect and sadness.

One good thing I can say about this final is that I like how the images really look like the ink blots from far away.

I really hope this makes sense, because I feel like since I've had 5 days since I've finished these images I've had so much more time to let the effects of the creation set it. And my mind is a jumble because I don't even know where to begin when describing the points I'm trying to get across.

Narrative Pre Blog: What was I thinking?

So naturally, because my brain operates in such a calm or organized manner, when I first started thinking about this project my mind actually drew a blank. I mean that in the sense that when given such a broad topic as anything it is really hard for me to just pick something and run with it. Most of this is a result of commitment issues i have because what if I start "running" with some idea and it actually sucks and there isn't anything I can do about it because my mind is already locked to this shitty narrative i picked.
And oddly enough I think this is the point where I realized that I may be on to something....Ok, so, this is how I see it in my mind. Life is a canvas, and we are all colors and we can choose to uses as many colors as possible or we can chose to paint with the same ones, a.k.a the same people. Variety is the spice of life, but there are people who don't like food to be spicy so the world is full of all kinds of fools.
What I keep thinking about now is those splatter paint [yes I know they have a proper name] photos they use to decide if people are crazy or not...I mean I could be wrong but isn't the main point of those photos not actually the image but what the viewer sees in them? I mean is that then essentially then how our lives look. I mean that's why people came up with the quote "beauty is in the eye of the beholder?" I mean I could love something my friends hate, and beauty/taste/style are all relative statements.
I'm not sure if there is a statement that this project will make, I mean I would love for my work to stand for something, but I mean, cameras freak me out, and I'm using gimp because I can only be creative at the weirdest times. [in a scientific study it was proven that the right side of my brain only operates between the hours of 2am and 4am]
To some this up, I want my narrative to say something about beauty, or something similar, or whatever. the point is I want people to understand that the main reason i'm doing this is to get people to think about what decides what [what makes a shirt beautiful and not ugly] [what makes a work of art great? a fancy name?]. Why does my brain react this way. I mean context plays such a huge factor, there is a huge difference between how we look at pregnant married women, and pregnant girls in high-school.
..... The issue is I'm not really sure how I'm going to be able to do this. Actually I'm 100% not sure about how I'm going to go about this.

Getting F'd in 1 million words or less

I’ve struggled more with this project than any other because of the fact that the bases for my entire project is off of one word. I should have known that when both of my options began with the letter F that, it was also the position I was in when it came to this project [Figuratively I was “F’d”].

I immediately decided against fold because I don’t even fold my clothes so the thought of folding anything for a grade was by no means interesting. I also picture folds to be neat, another thing which I’m not by any means.
So Flow is the winner, and ALL I could think of was that annoying girl Flo from all those insurance commercials. Then all I could think about was flow, like a how a great rapper has flow…also not acceptable. [I’m very one track minded] Then I decided to think outside the box…and there is where I think I’m going to get F’d…

You see “Flow” in psychology refers to “the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity” well technically a mental state isn’t an action but to be in a flow state would require mental action and I thought so much about that applies to me in this class. I live in a house with 40 girls so distractions are easier to come by, than well the odds of everyone complaining about not being able to find “prince charming.” The point is I have to specifically wait for times when I know everyone is asleep, aka 4am when every normal creature is fast asleep in bed. No not me. I have to be the only one in the room, I have to have music specific to the task at hand and although I do bounce around when working on these projects

There are 10 factors associated with a state of flow some of which apply to me are
1. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness – did I “blackout” and create this….i think so
2. A lack of awareness of bodily needs – which explains why I’m awake at 4am on a Tuesday morning when I feel like I’m swallowing knives. [pretty sure that isn’t normal]
3. Absorption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself - for most of the project I forgot that there was another girl in the dining room studying by me, I also did not respond to the million text messages from my mother asking me if I’m going to go to the doctor in the morning.

The point is when I’m doing these projects in my mind these is so much going on in my head, and the ideas flow past me, the easiest way to describe it is like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz … I of course relate to the wicked witch pedaling on her bike in the midst of the tornado as objects fly past her…the wicked witch is in a flow state because regardless of everything going on around her she is still fully focused on getting Dorothy and “her little dog too.”



All the blurry objects on the outside of the laptop are websites that ultimately waste my time and distract me, and my screen is clean in the middle because it’s a clean background and I’m focused on the task at hand

The quote is
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, and clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “it’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take then to.”

…. I’m Flowing….I’m in a state of flow at my laptop which oddly enough I took for granted until my roommates crashed and she literally almost freaked out in the middle of the apple store.. These are everyday objects that have such an impact on our lives, moods, and emotions that it is a little frightening because we’ve gotten to a point where our love for objects replaces our love for mankind, and people.

I promise I’m never on drugs of any kind when I write these, this is literally how my mind works as embarrassing as it is for me to admit that

Super Duper

Two things’ came to my mind when I heard about this project, the first was obviously Dane Cook's jokes about super powers which I thought about including a link to but decided against that [so watch at your own risk], the other obviously was Andy Warhol. I don't know what it is about super powers and comic strips that immediately make me think of him, I think it's because every time I look at comics I can see the little dots of color used to make each image and if that doesn't scream Warhol I don't know what does, other than someone actually screaming “WARHOL.”

I then decided to take the obvious route and go with neither of the first two images I thought of, there was a brief idea of a PTS'ing super power [PTS = Pretend to Sleep...It's what you do at bars to get people you don't want to talk to, to go away] I then decided that it would be hard to portray that in an image. I then began thinking about situations I find myself in that I secretly wish I had an escape route for, and I realized these situations are all normally the same event just different places and different faces....

The Moral of this rambling is that, if I could have a super power I would hope that I could be invisible. You know, so that if a guy comes up to hit on me at the bar and the first thing he asks me is "do you want to dance?" I can just turn myself invisible and I won't have to fumble for an excuse/the truth which is I really don't like to dance, and I'm not sure why I'm even at the "club" in the first place. And I have no intention of getting to know this so called stranger because my plan is to order food and end up safely in my own bed at the end of the night.
The question is then, what does this say about me? Am I afraid of talking to guys? Check. Really Awkward? Check. Does the ‘situation’ give me nightmares? Double Check.

And this is where the “why did you do what you did…” question becomes really hard to answer…maybe I picked the conga line because as fun as they are, I think when you are watching them, they just look so awkward that you don’t want to stand and watch, so you jump in. I just wanted this to be a fun photo, I’m not sure I’m taking any stands about social norms, or how I feel pressured to go to places I don’t find all that interesting because that’s what all my friends are doing.

If I were a completely unbiased third party opinion and I was asked to critique this work I would laugh at it, not because it is funny, but because it doesn’t even look realistic. The lights from the disco are flat behind the people in the image and the cropping around the party goers kind of sucks. Also all 3 images are of varying qualities, the “situation” appears to be the main subject when he shouldn’t be because the gorgeous blonde fading in the background should stick out more than everyone else, because it should be obvious that she is fading…and not that this is a photo of the situation with a fading girl in the background behind him, with a conga line behind her. I’m not happy with anything because I know tomorrow in class everyone else’s things will be way cooler than mine and I’m the one who started the class saying I liked graphic design. I take it back after all these assignments…because my grandpa Photoshop’s better images on our Christmas cards.
And that is my completely disorganized but completely accurate statement about my thought process during this assignment. I also learned my hair looks flat when I go out. Score for me.

Items for sale

This Project was hard for me because I felt like I was leaving my diary open for people.

The Journey

I roll out of bed in the mornings, and pop in the same playlist every day. Its starts off with Bobby Brown’s “I feel good.” It is at that point that I say to myself “Today will be a good day” and I head out the door. The route I take is never the same, sometimes I walk through Wexner, and the oval...other times I take 17th all the way down.
My issue with this assignment is that I don’t consider anything I’ve ever made art. I love making flyers and print art yet nothing I’ve done is artistic. This is why this was so hard for me to do. To me my ideas always seem commonplace, my ideas are nothing but ordinary. So my approach was more about the mental process of the journey to class. My mind is a jumble like the photo, and yet I know I have a clear ending. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve only blinked and arrived to class. My mind is elsewhere yet my physical body is going through the steps of walking to class. This project was really interesting to me though, I feel as though what I’ve created doesn’t say anything about me. It doesn’t have a theme, or a point I’m trying to prove. I think to me this says self discovery, this is about me trying to figure out what where exactly it is I am when I’m walking to class.

I also feel like my blog entry is a mirror image of what I’ve created because I’m pretty sure neither make sense to anyone else.

Post One ...what fun..

My Name is Lindsey Beggin and that is what I look like...

I'm the funniest person I know. I come from a big family and a small town. I do everything at the last minute and I'm a hard core perfectionist, which is why I procrastinate in the first place. I'm a junior who is studying fashion and retail yet I'm a closet computer nerd. If I could do it all over again, or go to college for the rest of my life, I would have picked a computer science and engineering major and had I been more interested in drawing I would have chosen Graphic Design. But oh well...
Also I missed the first day of class because I thought it started at 8:30am and not 9:30 and figured since no one was there and the lights were off that class was cancelled and I just missed the e-mail. Good thing only one person will read this because it would be pretty embarrassing if everyone knew that.

My Top 5 lists includes [but is not limited to]:
1. Favorite Condiment: Franks Red Hot ... Which goes on anything and everything
2. Favorite Food Group: Fried Foods
3. Favorite time of the day: Nap time
4. Favorite Book of the Moment: An Object of Beauty
5. Biggest Fear: Silence