Today in New Media we were visited by Paolo Tossolini, who is an entrepreneur and designer in the AR/VR industry. He explained to us his concept of “mashup” as a strategy for creating something which was not there before. Through the process of mashing-up new technologies and familiar business heuristics, he has been able to sometimes be the first one to position himself to clients with a particular AR proof-of-concept.
I am reminded of something we learned about in our Intro to Graphic Design class this week with Jill, which is that of “gestalt”. Gestalt is the psychological concept that posits that human visual perception is centered on the whole, rather than the parts. Under a theory of “gestalt”, we derive meaning from graphics, or even just sensory experiences in general, through an assessment of the entire milieu at once, as opposed to analyzing each discrete component of an experience sequentially.
Somehow, through “mashup” and “gestalt”, the theme of combining things to make something new seems to be sticking in my mind this week. I certainly have been feeling like my brain is a soup cauldron, rapidly being stuffed with not only ingredients from the five courses we are taking, each unique and disparate in some ways, but also with the special spices that I’m bringing with me from my life outside of school.
For this week’s blog assignment, I chose to submit a graphic/audio mashup. The audio portion is a mashup of two songs that I made at home using my DJ equipment. The songs are: Through the Fire by Chaka Khan and Through the Rain by Mariah Carey, and they are some of my favorite songs to listen to when I am feeling like I need to get through something difficult, such as this transition into my next chapter as a design student. The graphic portion is a composition I made in Photoshop, meant to be a kind of “album cover” for this mashup, and it depicts me working at a desk, something I haven’t had to do in over a year. I depict myself in three styles: photo, hand-drawn, and vector-graphic. Together, I feel like these two portions represent my dreams and feelings that I have around this program. I strongly hope that my growth as a visual designer will harmoniously marry with my existing skills as a musician, to hopefully create a new whole, something that wasn’t there before, something unique and more brilliant than the sum of its parts.
One reply on “thru new beginnings”
That was a nice touch！