I was in the Mapping Our City studio and my coaches were Andrew and Carmin.

Mapping Our City was split into two sections. The first week we read translations of fantasy stories and wrote about them. We went on long derives, which are long directionless walks, to observe what’s around you. On these derives we were looking for things that we thought were interesting for our themes, which were things we were interested in about our city. My original theme was old things, but then I noticed my eye kept getting drawn to sewer covers. I made a collage based on my derives.

            I worked with Eric for my collage. At first, we were pretty directionless with our art, just like our derive. I didn’t like my first collage, so I ripped I up. I then took the ripped up pieces and randomly glued them to the edges as a border of the paper and glued an old map of Cambridge in the middle. I liked my collage much better after this because it really illustrated the derive, and how it was about the journey of the derive rather than the final project.

            The next half of the studio was making an augmented reality. I did this part of the studio with Jacob. He had the idea of looking for colors around the city, and I had the idea of the sewer covers. We combined these ideas to come up with the story. Our story was that Cambridge is covered with murals, and public art. We decided that the artists that paint this art live in the sewers, and come out at night to paint.

            We made two Aurasma clips. An Aurasma is an app that triggers a video when you point at it. Our first Aurasma explains where the artists live, and how they are activists under ground. The other is a clip showing the people coming out of the sewer to paint.

            This studio was definitely not what I expected. The first half of the studio was hard for me to get engaged in. I wasn’t compelled by the difficult writings, or the long freezing derives- it was an incredibly cold January week in Cambridge.

The second half of the studio was also difficult, but in different ways. We made the Aurasma clips using Photoshop and After Effects. I knew the basics of Photoshop from Genius Camp, but After Effects was brand new to me.  I was definitely frustrated at times with the programs, but now I feel very comfortable with Photoshop and I feel like I can survive After Effects.

For this studio, Jacob and I split our tasks. I did a lot of the computer work and storyline, and he did a lot of the planning.