Praxis #3 was a bit of a challenge for me partly due to the fact that it is near the end of the semester and quite honestly, I have been lacking creativity. However, I am really thankful we were able to work in groups as the combination of our ideas gave me the energy that I needed and allowed me to consider a wide array of viewpoints when composing our multimedia manifesto. Although each post was relatively simple, we only had a limited amount of time to conceptualize and execute the project. In general, my process for developing an entry was discussing with my group over Zoom, completing our individual tasks, and assembling all of our components together on Scalar. 

For my first entry, I worked with Quan, Abby, and Annie to create a video that explores the issue of censorship. This topic was inspired by Trump’s recent attempts to ban TikTok as well as other issues with social media algorithms. As teenagers in this highly digitized era, we are constantly consuming media to the extent that we no longer question what we see. Many social media corporations have an algorithm that cycles specific content that the viewer is interested in. For example, if a viewer has beliefs that are aligned with a political party, they will continue to receive posts that agree with their opinion and will not engage in content that opposes their ideas. Although this is a smart marketing strategy, it is damaging to our political/social climate. Part of the reason why America is so divided today is due to our political beliefs and how we view the other party. Because we don’t get the opportunity to engage with those who hold differing opinions, we continue to make assumptions about them and thus, carry a sense of distrust towards dissimilarity. The lack of a love ethic is fundamentally harmful to society as we constantly preach unity without realizing that difference is not the contrary. From reading Bell Hooks’s All About Love and reflecting on what social justice really means, I have realized that lacking difference does not narrow the divide between us, but actually pushes us further apart. In order to live in a world where everyone is respectful and loving, we must first embrace our differences. Censorship is the enemy to love as without freedom of expression, we would be unable to understand one another and thus be confined to our own beliefs.

Similarly to my first entry, my second media post discusses the importance of embracing difference and questions what utopia really means. I worked with Annie and Kristin in making a collage, writing annotations, and providing a description. We chose to make a collage using different books, movies, and TV shows that explore the idea of a utopian dystopia. Most of the books that we chose were books that we read in middle school and high school. Reflecting on this, I find it interesting how growing up, our education system has repeatedly urged us to read books that encourage individualism and political awareness. Though I am not sure what the true intentions are of our education system, the content that I have absorbed in my youth consistently emphasized the idea of free speech and freethinking. Could it be that they are preparing us incase such a utopian dystopia occurs? I wonder if the stress on this notion is correlated to the values of freedom and individualism in the United States, as compared to some other countries that prioritize collectivism and community. Nevertheless, Annie, Kristin and I have concluded for now that a utopian future is impossible to achieve, as it will only be disguised by a dystopia.

For my third media post, I worked with Quan, Abby, and Annie again where we chose to build upon our first entry. While our first post critiqued autocratic censorship, we wanted to explore the opposite side of the spectrum –the extremity of free speech– to gain a better understanding on how to attain an equitable society. Conceptually, we wanted to make a video with overlapping voices that discussed celebrity gossip and mean comments from social media platforms. Our intentions were to overwhelm the audience with “unimportant” information and disguise the narration of the original poem behind the layering of the voices. I was in charge of making the soundscape and editing the video. In my sound editing process, I layered the recordings of us reading celebrity news over Annie’s narration of the poem. I used reverb and echoed the “unimportant” information to give it a “in through one ear, out through the other” effect. Furthermore, I decided to contrast the urgent tone of the poem by integrating laughter as I felt that this elicited an uneasy feeling. As for my video editing process, I wanted to emphasize this overflow of information so I screenshotted articles from paparazzi sites and made the images overlap with one another, parallel to the layering of the voices in the sound piece. While the images appear to be messy and random, my intentions were to distract the audience and drown out any signs of the poem.

Overall, the process of collaboration helped me reimagine a variety of possibilities for the future and made me question my perception of what a utopia truly means. Because I was able to use a variety of media interventions from writing to graphic design to sound editing and video editing, I had the opportunity to explore the effects of each method. Although I believe my strengths lie in video editing, I am glad I was able to practice using other techniques to storytelling, as they are all equally important. Furthermore, building a collective manifesto changed the way I perceived media making. I used to think that media making had to be a very structured process starting with a concept. Although a majority of multimedia interventions are made using conceptual approaches, working intuitively can sometimes allow for more creativity. Not all of my media posts turned out the way I intended it to be, however, I trusted the process and it led me in directions that I had never envisioned before. I notably took this “intuitive approach” in making the video for my first entry and edited based on what I was feeling. With Abby and Quan’s drawings and Annie’s poem, I had to figure out how to integrate image, text, movement, and audio into a cohesive story. I didn’t exactly have a vision to begin with but as I played around with the text, the rhythm of the audio, and the words of the poem, I created a sort of lyric video that highlights the underlying message of censorship. Additionally, I used this intuitive approach when constructing the soundscape for our third entry. While we had a general idea of what we wanted the sound piece to result in, it was up to my creativity to layer the voices in an effective way. Furthermore, working in a group for Praxis #3 was really helpful in terms of brainstorming new ideas. Being able to work with Quan, Abby, and Annie twice was extremely helpful in expanding our original objectives and exploring a different route. I am glad we had the opportunity to explore not only a dystopia, but a utopia as well. Comparing and contrasting two opposing sides of a spectrum was helpful in understanding two different perspectives and is a necessary action in order to maintain an equitable society. Because choosing one extremity may not be practical nor suitable in achieving a desirable future, we must find a balance between the two. Furthermore, in our process of making entry number two, Kristin Annie and I wanted to make something related to a utopian society but after discussing, we realized that we couldn’t even agree on what utopia means. We took this confusion and decided to embrace it, allowing for our audience to not only see our proposition, but questioning what the term utopia means to them. I believe that this is a crucial measure to achieving a future that sufficiently provides for everyone’s interests; we must discuss what our idea of an idealistic future looks like and as media makers, we must encourage discussion through our works.