Rose's Digital Project

Inspired by Rousseau’s description of the nature of Walden, I made a video to tell the natural history of St. Stephen’s Episcopal School. In this video, I also mention the potential danger around the St.Stephen’s campus.

The first part of the video traced back to 1949, when two bishops created this school. They built several buildings around chapel. After the first few years of St. Stephen’s development, the campus was like an Eden Garden that was isolated from the crowed and boisterous of Austin city. Standing on the top of the hill, there is no building but trees and bushes. Among the natural campus lived a lot of creatures such as deer and scrawls. Some people who live near campus also would like to visit the campus to enjoy the nature.

However, due to the recent years’ financial problems, St. Stephen’s began to sell lands in order to keep the balance of its budget. The sold lands were used by their new owners to build new buildings such as apartments and stores in order to make a large amount of profit. The materialized world destroys the beautiful nature. The outside development is encroaching St. Stephen’s natural campus.

In the first part, the campus is peaceful so I choose “first rose in spring” as background music. However, in the second part of the movie which is marked by the scene of signing the contract, I set the background track as Holst’s Mars to signify the sudden change from peace to danger.

What should we do to protect the natural beauty of the St.Stehphe’s? The natural history of St. Stephen’s edifies me to protect the nature from outside materialized invasion.

The purpose of this project is to display, through the eyes of individuals in an ecosystem, a microcosm of the natural world in which the personal perspective tends to cover up the global perspective. The personal perspective is the story of the lizard’s crusade from the cricket/lizard’s point of view, and consists of both the instinctual habits of the lizard and the “unfair” devouring of the crickets. From a global standpoint, this example of a specific ecological hierarchy is not only ordinary, but also extraordinarily necessary. In transition to the mirrored macrocosm, it is the execution of the food-chain that controls population growth and maintains balance in nature. In the circumstance of cricket overpopulation, population growth on the part of cricket predators follows suit, which then leads to a decrease in cricket population, then finally a decline in predator population. This is, simply, one of many cyclical processes that retain order in the natural world. So, unfortunately for insects everywhere, it is and always will be the lizard’s duty to unsympathetically devour them.

Louis's project

A Suburban Ruin

A little ways off of Rollingwood Drive, there’s a building that’s been left to decay into the landscape. Right between two suburban residences is the remnant of an old stone house, falling apart and abandoned. Here is a perfect place to observe the interactions between the hills and forests of West Lake Hills and the suburbs, where the two distinct worlds come close together. It looks as if the building is melting into the ground at the same time as plants send their roots and stalks up to consume it. The floor is completely stripped away, revealing the foundation supports and the bare dirt underneath. Nearby, there’s a pool filled with dirt and garbage that serves as the centerpiece to an old patio.

The relationship between humanity and nature is not at its most beautiful here. To any average person, the building is an unsightly blemish in an otherwise orderly and relatively well-groomed neighborhood. Even when I get up close to this suburban ruin, there’s nothing that most people would call beautiful. Rusty pipes, crumbling walls, and twisted supports were what caught my eye as the theme of the place. Every now and then, a stretch of green grass or a blooming flower brought some visual flair, but it was always the beauty of nature, not that of the coexistence of nature and society. Rather, the spots that lie in between the two extremes of natural beauty and man-made organization are the spots that are the ugliest. Neither the green plants nor the order of the stone bricks can really flourish there. There’s something about this visual struggle that makes the scene quite distasteful to look at.

In stark contrast to the ruin is the surrounding suburb. Here, there’s no clash of worlds and no decay. There are only medium sized, low-profile houses that are well-maintained and that seem to be trying to stay out of the way. The border between these houses and the surrounding hills is much clearer, and is often staked out by a resolute metal fence. There’s none of the ugly, rusty, in-between area that makes up most of the ruin. Aesthetically, the neighborhood is much easier on the eye. It’s much more comforting when the world of humans is kept behind the fence where it belongs and when vines and bushes don’t start creeping up beyond their boundaries.

But really, what can we learn from the aesthetics of a place? Why does Thoreau, for example, spend the entire chapter “Sounds” describing the sights and sounds around him? What does he hope to tell us with this? Thoreau seems to say that we cannot truly learn about the nature of reality if we don’t look and observe the world around us. I agree; seeing our surroundings in a new objective light, outside of classes or books, is essential to understanding them. But perhaps more important is what the mere act of observation can tell us about ourselves. By noticing how we see things and react to them, we can explore our basic prejudices and our way of interacting with the world. In the case of this ruin, it’s important that the “in-between areas” are the ugliest. There is no harmonious coexistence of nature and man-made structure, no cooperation between the two; there is only an ugly conflict of swimming pools filled with dirt and bare dirt on the ground and rust consuming everything. Perhaps we have a hard time seeing the beauty in such a place because we do not truly believe in a peaceful coexistence between humans and what we refer to as “the natural world.” We prefer the neatly defined borders of the suburbs, with nature on one side of the fence and people on the other. Maybe if we are to learn to live with our environment rather than try to conquer it, we have to learn also to see the beauty in these in-between places of rust and dirt. And so I, who am no photographer, took a camera to the ruin and tried to take pictures of some of the eye-catching decay.

Notes:

- Any music that I’ve added to my presentation is from Woodland Sketches, composed by Edward MacDowell. MacDowell was an American romantic composer who lived only shortly after Thoreau (he was born two years before Thoreau died). His work was heavily inspired by nature. The pieces in my presentation are At an Old Trysting-Place and To a Wild Rose.

- I used a computerized voice and added various types of distortion to try to give the same atmosphere as my landscape: that of something mechanical and man-made decaying and wasting away in a more organic way.

"Oasis In Austin"

I interviewed two golfers, a man and a woman, and asked them why they go to the driving range, if it is a calm place for them, a song they associate with the driving range, and why. I used their audios over the footage I took of the driving range. I put the song that they chose over the audio and the video once they said what their song was. I also took photos of the driving range and I used those at the end.

I chose to interview these two golfers about what the driving range means to them because I believe people have a certain relationship with nature and this relationship is particularly strong with people who frequently go there. Music is very important to me and I almost always seem to relate a song to a place. I was interested to know if other people did too, especially for a place as serene and beautiful as the driving range at Austin Country Club. I find that I constantly have a song playing in my head and it often matches the feeling I get from my location. I was interested in why the golfers chose their song because my reason may not be their reason. I originally had the same song choice as the second golfer, which I found really interesting. I tried to decide between “Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay” and “Hold My Hand” because I associate both of those songs with calm and happy places. “Hold My Hand” is very fitting for the driving range because of my own memories of the range. I learned how to golf there and that was also the first time I tried to quit something because I was failing at it. I learned on that driving range from my dad and instructor that golf is frustrating but you cannot give up. The song “Hold My Hand” relates to how I needed someone there to keep me going because if it had been up to me, I would have quit. I eventually stopped golfing, but I had many more great memories golfing after that moment. The opinion of these two golfers was important to me because I think you learn a lot about a place depending on why it is important to someone else. I realized a lot about ACC after talking to these golfers. I have been going there my whole life and I suddenly have a completely new perspective. When I went to interview these golfers, it was about 95 degrees outside. This showed me how important it really was for them to have their time of escape, even if it was extremely hot outside.

Will Marcus

In my video, I tried to convey some of the ideas of the famous transcendentalists. I wanted to capture the dangers of industrialism as well as emphasize the importance of spending some time outside of the unrelenting pace of the stream of modern life. Slowing down and living in the moment allows one to notice all the beautiful things hidden in plain sight.

-Light bulb exploding:

I thought this would be a dramatic way of transitioning to the MOPAC time lapse. Lightbulbs were a significant milestone in the journey towards industrialization. Seeing one explode captures not only the physical dangers and unpredictability of modern technology, like Thoreau’s powder mill, but also the danger of becoming overly dependent on it. Civilization will often crumble away as soon as the lights go out. For example, the New York black out a few years ago gave rise to widespread rioting and looting.

-Slow motion lighter and time-lapsed cigarette:

The flame represents modern man’s addiction to consumption and the cigarette represents the consequences of it. The lighter is one of millions of other Bic lighters that look exactly alike, and that’s what most people see. When one slows down the action, however, a small firework show is revealed. The problem is that most people live too fast to see the beauty in the small things. For the most part, nobody buys a lighter to appreciate the beauty of the flame; they buy them to light cigarettes. Cigarettes slowly and steadily kill those who smoke them. They epitomize the dangers of an unregulated capitalism. They are consumer goods that exemplify the way “we have become the tools of our tools”; they enslave all who buy them.

-Blood in the water

The blood in the water represents the price of industrialization. As our society becomes increasingly advanced, we slowly lose touch with Emerson’s Aborigine warrior. Each new technology and convenience discovered is another drop of blood falling off the bridge and swirling away back to nature.

frank's project

Path—Freedom—Sentiment

The vogue fogs completely covered the St. Stephen’s campus during the raining day. I walked
on the path behind the tennis courts. The path is about a mile long while is quite clam and moist.
In the morning, the trees on the sides of the path looks like dancers who dances gently with the
winds. The sun opposite the path seems like a lightly director to lead the birds and tress to
performance elegantly. The scenery of the path in the morning looks like a perfect and
harmonious painting that I have never seen. While in the evening, accompanied with the twilight,
the path is a little bit darker. When I stalk in the path with some gentle piano music, I can see
my shadow reflected by the nightfall surround me, that makes me feel a little bit of scary but
excited. I always walk along on the path because the feeling when I was there can always haul
my mind to be patient and relieved. Even though the scenery is not magnificent that make
people feel surprised, the path’s view is kind of quiet but affluence, pure but colorful. The
voice by the birds and the flows by the trees make me feel like that I join a natural musical
performance. During the spring term, I run to the path for training every day. I wear my pants
and shirt, carry my iPod, and start from the tennis court to the end of path, which is an old
gate. Outside the gate is a street for residents, which I only have been a time. I run in the
path with the sweat and pant, but I like that painstaking. It makes me feel free and relaxed.
I usually run to the gate and do push up in every thirty steps to come back. The path makes
me tired, but the tired makes me release. Anyway, whatever the condition of environment
changes in the path, the feeling of freedom and relaxation is never eliminated in my mind.
I deeply appreciate that the path can stay with me for three year, carried my freedom and hope.