Moving Images

Focus Question:  How did the iterative design thinking process come into play in this activity?

Ask: This assignment was slightly more open-ended than previous assignments. My group and I had to ask ourselves how we could incorporate motion into something that involved pictures and how we could do it in a way that felt cohesive and interesting.
Imagine: Ashley came up with the idea to create an earthquake which was a great starting point for our ideas to then branch off of. We envisioned shaking movements with photos of landscapes and buildings.

Build: We got to work cutting out and organizing images of landscapes and buildings. We taped the motor to the inside and to the top of our carton and ended up having to attach a glue stick to it as well in order to get it to move more aggressively to resemble an earthquake. We used all the images of landscapes to decorate around the body of the carton and then we used all of the images of buildings to rest on the top like a little town. We considered how images stand in a pop-up book and we decided to create and attach accordion folded pieces of paper underneath each building cut out because it would help to create more motion in our buildings and the varying heights would give our little town some more depth.

Evaluate: It took a lot of trial and error and we used almost all of our available time to get our desired results but in the end, I think we created a successful mini earthquake!

Share: We then of course had to share our moving images with the rest of the class and explain our process. Since this project was a little more flexible and unpredictable, it was interesting to see what everyone came up with and how different all of the projects were.

1. What did you learn? Describe your learning process. What was most challenging?  What was most fun?  (.5 points)
I learned how difficult it can be to get motion to match image successfully. Since there is a time limit, you have to commit to an idea and really brainstorm how to make it work. The envisioning and initial concept will determine all the steps and challenges that you then must face along the way. Once we created all of the visuals of a town, it was very important that we succeed at creating motion that would resemble an earth quake. There are so many little contributing factors that effect motion (like weight and positioning) and so it takes a lot of exploration and testing things out to see what works. The most challenging part was getting it to move correctly and the most fun was setting up the little town and seeing those two elements of the project come together. 

2. How did this activity connect (or not) to your prior knowledge of art and art education? (.25 points) How might you use and/or adapt this activity in an art classroom? (.25 points)
I personally have never worked with visual projects that involve motion like this. It is an interesting idea to get students to think of how they can incorporate motion and picture together. Especially because motion really adds another layer of depth and story telling potential to a visual project. I think it would be neat to come up with some kind of animation inspired project that explored using picture and motion and really focused on the story telling quality that these projects could offer.