rhetorical analysis
Moving from home to a new place, I experienced the dramatic change of living environment. Surrounded by busy traffic, gigantic skyscrapers, and crowded streets full of pedestrians at home, I was not feeling very comfortable in the new space after coming to Atlanta where walking around was not very common and everything was very far from each other. At first, I did not know how to fit my lifestyle into the new space. I understood that it would be hard to find a place similar to home again in Atlanta, so a better way was to discover what was unique about this new space and try to embrace it as a new place. Luckily, the nature of Emory “forced” me to enjoy and appreciate its characteristics given that I could not avoid seeing trees, little squirrels, and the wonderful blue sky when I was walking around campus. With the use of a extendable selfie stick and a phone camera, I was able to percept the world with a brand new experience and give the nature a fresh understanding.
To put the idea of this project into the academic context, the concept of “mythical space and place” that Tuan talks about in his book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience can be applied. “World view is a people’s more or less systematic attempt to make sense of environment…All people require a sense of order and fitness in their environment, but not all seek it in the elaboration of a coherent cosmic system” (88). In another word, people need to find a position in an environment to understand how it works. In my case, the movement from one place to another place required me to find myself a position to fit in and to look at the new environment through different ways. As I realized that the nature of Emory was a big part of the new space that stood out from my previous experience, I started to discover what was so special about the nature here, and the more importantly, I found a way to connect to the new space, making it as a cosy place for me.
In this particular visual-based project, it was beneficial for me to convey personal feelings that were otherwise hard to be described in words through pictures and sound. In another word, utilizing the two modes allowed the audience to experience the process of gaining the feeling from the scenery that I had saw and. For example, the feeling of peace derived from the amazing blue sky, the wonderfulness of the gorgeous fall colors of the leaves, the vibrance from the movement of the leaves and water, the vitality from the living beings including the squirrels and so on. Essentially, these were my new perceptions of the nature in the new space that I never had in the past. By getting to know the way to taste the nature and bringing meanings of the new space to myself, I believed that the busy streets and the gigantic buildings had been replaced with the nature as a new lifestyle, turning the new space that was once alien into a place that I felt cosy and pleasant.
Importantly, to take pictures and videos that communicated the feelings that I have just mentioned earlier, I needed to use various techniques to create them for the audience. To begin with, as I have mentioned, I used a extendable stick to which my phone was attached to reach an angle that would be hard to be done by human arms. This method also allowed me to stabilize the pictures while I am shooting a video. So, I could produce more high-quality pictures and videos and also capture my entire self when taking a selfie.
In addition, the slow-mo function in my phone enabled me to captures fast movements into slow-motion video so that the details of movements could be seen in a more comfortable way. For example, tree branches and leaves fluttered with the wind quite rapidly and sometimes the movement could be very small. A slow-mo video would allow the audience to observe the details of such movement. Another illustration was that squirrels tended to move around very fast and so a slow-mo video allows us to see the details of the movements of the wagging tails and the munching.
Moreover, when taking some of the pictures, I tried to incorporate several objects together in a single image to express feelings that were otherwise hard by individual one. For example, by framing the red and orange leaves under the blue sky from an upward view, I was able to not only contextualize the picture (i.e., the time of the day and the weather), but also combine the colorfulness and variety of different leaves colors with the vastness of the sky. Such combination expressed the sensation that under the same sky, different ethnicities and races can get along well with each other, inspiring me to understand the culture in the new place that I did not even realized in the past.
Finally, the format of presenting the pictures to the audience was a digital story. Traditionally, in a digital story, the author usually told the story through his or her voice as the narrator. However, in this project, the story telling was all done by the pictures. To allow the audience to better understand it better, I decided to add background music that reflected the kinds of feelings that I had. The music I use was what I actually listened to when I was taking most of the pictures in the lullwater reserve. It gave me a light and relaxing feeling that had more strongly connected me to and engaged me with the nature and I believed it would also aide the audience to experience the digital story. Also, by not using background music at the beginning of the digital story (the traffic scene) and transitioning background music in, I tried to express the fact that I had embraced the new space as a place.
In conclusion, the purpose of creating my project in such way was to communicate the way through which I had adapted myself to the new space, and therefore had turned it from an alien space into a place in which I felt comfortable to the audience. And throughout this process, I had gained new understanding of the nature and the world around me.
To put the idea of this project into the academic context, the concept of “mythical space and place” that Tuan talks about in his book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience can be applied. “World view is a people’s more or less systematic attempt to make sense of environment…All people require a sense of order and fitness in their environment, but not all seek it in the elaboration of a coherent cosmic system” (88). In another word, people need to find a position in an environment to understand how it works. In my case, the movement from one place to another place required me to find myself a position to fit in and to look at the new environment through different ways. As I realized that the nature of Emory was a big part of the new space that stood out from my previous experience, I started to discover what was so special about the nature here, and the more importantly, I found a way to connect to the new space, making it as a cosy place for me.
In this particular visual-based project, it was beneficial for me to convey personal feelings that were otherwise hard to be described in words through pictures and sound. In another word, utilizing the two modes allowed the audience to experience the process of gaining the feeling from the scenery that I had saw and. For example, the feeling of peace derived from the amazing blue sky, the wonderfulness of the gorgeous fall colors of the leaves, the vibrance from the movement of the leaves and water, the vitality from the living beings including the squirrels and so on. Essentially, these were my new perceptions of the nature in the new space that I never had in the past. By getting to know the way to taste the nature and bringing meanings of the new space to myself, I believed that the busy streets and the gigantic buildings had been replaced with the nature as a new lifestyle, turning the new space that was once alien into a place that I felt cosy and pleasant.
Importantly, to take pictures and videos that communicated the feelings that I have just mentioned earlier, I needed to use various techniques to create them for the audience. To begin with, as I have mentioned, I used a extendable stick to which my phone was attached to reach an angle that would be hard to be done by human arms. This method also allowed me to stabilize the pictures while I am shooting a video. So, I could produce more high-quality pictures and videos and also capture my entire self when taking a selfie.
In addition, the slow-mo function in my phone enabled me to captures fast movements into slow-motion video so that the details of movements could be seen in a more comfortable way. For example, tree branches and leaves fluttered with the wind quite rapidly and sometimes the movement could be very small. A slow-mo video would allow the audience to observe the details of such movement. Another illustration was that squirrels tended to move around very fast and so a slow-mo video allows us to see the details of the movements of the wagging tails and the munching.
Moreover, when taking some of the pictures, I tried to incorporate several objects together in a single image to express feelings that were otherwise hard by individual one. For example, by framing the red and orange leaves under the blue sky from an upward view, I was able to not only contextualize the picture (i.e., the time of the day and the weather), but also combine the colorfulness and variety of different leaves colors with the vastness of the sky. Such combination expressed the sensation that under the same sky, different ethnicities and races can get along well with each other, inspiring me to understand the culture in the new place that I did not even realized in the past.
Finally, the format of presenting the pictures to the audience was a digital story. Traditionally, in a digital story, the author usually told the story through his or her voice as the narrator. However, in this project, the story telling was all done by the pictures. To allow the audience to better understand it better, I decided to add background music that reflected the kinds of feelings that I had. The music I use was what I actually listened to when I was taking most of the pictures in the lullwater reserve. It gave me a light and relaxing feeling that had more strongly connected me to and engaged me with the nature and I believed it would also aide the audience to experience the digital story. Also, by not using background music at the beginning of the digital story (the traffic scene) and transitioning background music in, I tried to express the fact that I had embraced the new space as a place.
In conclusion, the purpose of creating my project in such way was to communicate the way through which I had adapted myself to the new space, and therefore had turned it from an alien space into a place in which I felt comfortable to the audience. And throughout this process, I had gained new understanding of the nature and the world around me.