Art and Technology - Mike Wheeler

My deconstruction video is based on the idea of paradise. I wanted to deconstruct the literal meaning of paradise and give it a new meaning that is still relevant to the word. Going to school in Florida, many people say that I go to school in paradise. But what really is paradise? I wrote the monologue that I speak in the video and I think it speaks for itself for what I truly believe is paradise. Paradise can be found in many different things, not just the palm trees and the ocean.

This was by far my favorite project we have done in this class. At the beginning of the semester when I first saw the performance art project, I was a little nervous because I had never even thought of doing something like that. I'm usually a very outgoing person and don't really have a shy bone in my body. But when it came down to being forced to actually go into public and do something outrageous, I got anxious. However, after doing my performance, I felt so relieved and so good that I had accomplished something that I was slightly scared of.  I decided to do my project while I was at home in Chicago for Thanksgiving break. The concept of my performance was to test the culture of the people in the city of Chicago and see how they would react when an "outsider" is dressed in complete opposite apparel and asking a ridiculous question: "Excuse me, can you tell me where the beach is?" It is winter time in Chicago and is very, very cold out so I obviou

Dubstep: La Roux - In For The Kill I chose to do La Roux for the Dubstep genre because her song In For The Kill was an amazing and revolutionary song when it came out. Her use of the synthesizer and heavy, yet high pitched bass line gave for a very exciting, new sound for dubstep. When people think about dubstep, they usually think about really heavy, headbanging music, but La Roux defies that stereotype. Technology echoes all throughout her song, especially with adjusting the different pitches of her voice and the sounds to compliment it. Love this song. La Roux - In For The Kill Electronic: Disclosure - Latch I chose this song mainly because it has been one of my favorite songs of all time for a while now. Electronic is my favorite genre of music because of the insane beats and rythm that it produces. Within Disclosure's song, you can literally hear all of the different electronic aspects used to produce the baseline sound. The only part of this song that doesn't use

For my Xerox project, I mainly used copies of my hands and my forearms to create a mandala-style sun. The sun always represents positive energy and has been a theme in my artwork recently. I am all about positive energy and no matter what happens, the sun always sets and always comes back up in the morning. Being a college student is by far the most challenging thing I have ever been and it can be really hard to find the light in a lot of the things that we go through. But always staying positive and not letting things get to you is the key in being successful not only in college, but in life as well.  I really enjoyed doing this project. Although it was quite the struggle for me to get my hands on a working scanner, I ended up making so many copies of different positions of my hands and forearms. I knew the idea of what I wanted to make, but had no clue what it would really look like while I was scanning myself. Only when I cut everything out and laid it all out on the floor di

Oh boy, this project was by far the most tedious and mentally challenging project I have ever done! I used these little glitter sequence pieces on a 12x12 inch piece of wood. Because of the size of the glitter, my grid ended up being 48x59! I used more than 2,800 of those glitter pieces and safe to say it took me quite a while. I really do love how the final product turned out and it was well worth my time spent. I wanted to do a sun and a moon because it related to my flip book animation. I honestly didn't like how mediocre my flip book was, so I wanted to go above and beyond for this project. The hardest part was figuring out the layout of the design. Once the layout was done, gluing the pieces on wasn't challenging, just very time consuming and sticky to say the least. I used a heavy duty glue stick to put the pieces on and the glitter kept sticking to my fingers. I had to get a good system going and I ended up moving pretty fast towards the end. This has def

When I first heard of ASCII art back in high school, I was always so intrigued with the idea behind it all. Everyone uses text symbols in their day to day lives, whether it be online or on social media. But using these characters and symbols to create complete and complex pieces of art blew my mind. I understand that art takes a lot of time and patience in every type of piece that is created, but this type of art takes this idea to a whole new level. Knowing exactly what characters to use and in what specific spots to get the entire piece to flow throughout must take so much time and precision, not to mention accuracy. If even one little character is off in the flow of the piece could throw off the entire thing. I had done something like this in my coding class. I had to use the '*' specifically to spell out my name in coding language. It was harder than normal ASCII art because I had to use coding, but it produces the same type of result. I can't even imagine if these AS

This flip book is a love story of the sun and the moon. They both develop on their own and then fall in love, all the while the moon is being selfish and only wants the spotlight for himself. When he diminishes after engulfing the sun, a beautiful sunflower grows and out comes the sun. It was a representation of how the light will always overcome the darkness in any situation.  Doing this flip book was honestly a lot more difficult than I would have ever imagined. Making sure that the images were close enough to flow smoothly throughout was a big challenge for me. I found myself ripping out pages and starting over multiple times. I was happy that I got to do this project, however, because it tapped into a creative side of me that I haven't seen in a while and was able to express myself through illustration and animation again.   https://youtu.be/C-k6Mf1waNM

A Village Romeo and Juliet Response

This short animated opera, Madama Butterfly, really took me by surprise being the very first form of opera I have ever watched. In my lifetime, I had never taken an interest in opera, yet this film immediately caught my attention. I am a digital arts major, so seeing that it was a stop motion animation drew me in right away and the music was very intense right off the bat. As the opera went on and the storyline progressed, I could feel myself becoming more and more attached to the main female character of the story. One scene that really grabbed my attention was the original sex scene between the native woman and the sailor. Being a stop motion animation, it can be a little challenging to portray such heavy emotion with the characters, but Madama Butterfly really captured the intense emotion of love and passion. After this initial scene, things took a turn for the dreadful when the reality of the woman's situation unfolded. You can really feel the love that the woman has for he

Wow, I never would have thought about creativity in such a new light if I had never watched this interview. Raul Cuero is an extraordinary man who has faced so much diversity and prejudice in his life and instead of letting is get him down, he used it and his creative mind to become a successful microbiologist. His interview was mind opening and touched base on a few points that particularly stuck with me. First, he learned how to motivate himself with the hate from his peers. He believed that everything is possible and everyone is capable of anything as long as you give your hardest effort. You hear people discriminating against you or telling you you can't do it, try your best to let them know that you are capable and you can raise yourself to the standards that they have raised you to. In everyday life, you can't let adversaries halt you from achieving your goals and reaching your highest potential. Secondly, he preached about everyone needing a universal consciousness.

"BicBowl" Equilibrium - noun - a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced. In a world full of chaos, we must coincide respectfully to ignite the brightest flame.

My name is Mike Wheeler and I am a Junior at here at UT majoring in digital arts. I used to be an Advertising and Public Relations major, but I changed it because I love producing art, especially digitally, and I realized my original major would not have taken me where I wanted to go. I'm from a small suburb north of Chicago and am a total midwest guy. I am very outgoing and energetic and I love making new connections with the people around me. I just moved into my first house down here in Tampa and have really begun establishing myself in this beautiful city. I work at an all organic juice bar down here in Tampa and also work as the Student Coordinator of Fraternity and Sorority Life here at UT. All my life I have been working pretty much, so I always know how to stay busy. My lifestyle is very sporadic and I am kind of all over the place. I am constantly on the move and I don't like not having anything to do, which is a good reason why I am so excited for this class. This