I’ve been updating my blog semi-regularly, but had forgotten my login until today. I’m cutting and pasting this entry but if you’d like to see the rest of my entries, please go to:
http://latinos-en-actup.tumblr.com/
It’s hard for me to let go of this project. I expose it now with a little apprehension but also with a lot affect.
I think I have made the right choice in changing the frame of my ‘description’, the landing page for my project, by introducing it as a design of remembrance and recounting of memories captured through audio and archival documents.
The points plotted on the map are large chunky X’s that at times look like the size of the West Village, and at other scales take up all of Puerto Rico, while the shaded geographical areas are crude reminders of the carpel tunnel-like sensations my fingers felt toward the end of the semester. These sensations produced mutant hexagon-like shapes over Jackson Heights and Nicaragua.
Tangent: As I type this, it occurs to me that I think of these places in such a disorderly way. If I was to map Vancouver, I would have probably taken a lot more care and attention to detail because I have its geography, its shape and contours engraved in my mind. That simply is not the case with The Bornx nor J.H. To select the areas, I had to open Google maps to see what the borders of the the neighborhoods were and sort of trace it.
Aside from the plotting, other elements that I’m dissatisfied with are the text, which has some of typos, an entire layer without any paragraph breaks (I entered the information for ‘Eventos’ before we had the Formatted Text option and didn’t get around to re-entering it properly ), my use of Spanish is inconsistent and my record ‘relations’ are a little quirky.
That being said, what I’m choosing to see now, and seeing much more in detail than any other details, is all the humanity and spirituality that the project captures. I think that it manages to accomplish what I had intended from the onset, using digital media to tell a compelling story. That of my subject and that of my own.
There is a vulnerability that I have learned in this urban media archaeology methodology(?), and it is something that I will reflect upon throughout the course of my graduate studies.
I predict that I’ll look back on this first semester in the Media Studies program and struggle to remember anything else but this Urban Media Archaeology project. If that’s the case, my memory will have served me right because this has definitely been an experience worth archiving, visualizing, prototyping, remembering…
Thanks for an inspiring start!
“That being said, what I’m choosing to see now, and seeing much more in detail than any of the rest, is all the humanity and spirituality that the project captures. I think that that it manages to accomplish what I had intended form the onset, using digital media to tell a compelling story. That of my subject, and that of my own. There is a vulnerability that I have learned in this urban media archaeology methodology(?), and it is something that I will reflect upon throughout the course of my graduate studies.” — These are such difficult lessons learn; they’re things that we gradually come to terms with — and the fact that you’re already asking such questions, that you’re already capable of such self-reflection, suggests that you’re prepared to ask some really big questions about yourself — and about knowledge and method and other “big ideas” — throughout your graduate studies.