A visual essay on New Media and Technology by Jordan Chestnut for Dr. Melanie Kohnen's English 1101 class at Georgia Tech, Fall '09.
The audio track was composed and recorded by Jordan Chestnut, and builds up and adds noise as the visual components get into more intricate technologies, and breaks back down to just an acoustic guitar for the end, as we see a basic power light.
The written accompaniment to my visual essay (if you were wondering what the pictures meant):
My theme is not an easily expressible thing. Having been at Tech now for two months, I realize how different an atmosphere it is than my previous schooling experience. Being among fellow nerds all the time has shown me what we can do with technology. I begin to see technology everywhere. Most people our age take technology for granted. The beginning of my visual essay introduces two things—time and video technology. The door is open next to the video camera, inviting the viewer into the essay, and the clock shows that it's just after 1, implying that you have plenty of time to explore. The second picture highlights the theme. Many people our age take technology for granted. In this image, there is a CAT-5 ethernet cable hanging out from the desk as a student lounges on his chair with his feet up on another chair. The ethernet cable gives internet; it connects a person to the world in close proximity. Pictures three, four, and five are a trilogy. Each picture shows a student in class or a study room on their laptop. The first student is doing Computer Science homework during a Math recitation, the second student is on Facebook during a Chemistry lecture, and the third student is on Skype in the study lounge of his dorm. Each picture shows the student and his computer clearly, while his surroundings are blurred. This shows that the student's focus in each photo is solely on his computer. As proof, none of these three students knew that I was taking their picture until I showed them. The sixth picture of my essay shows what these students are hypothetically missing. The professor's hand is at the bottom of the giant projector screen. He has a mechanism in his hand that allows him to change slides from the equation he wrote onto a digital notepad to something he prepared prior to class for his students to see. This picture is pretty much the same technology... on a larger scale. From there, it moves down to technology on a smaller scale. An ear with a headphone in it. The headphone may be leading to a computer, an iPod, or even a CD player. While you don't know, it doesn't matter, because it still employs technology that is amazing... and underrated. The last three pictures also act as a sort of trilogy. The visual essay moves along three pictures of lights that signify power. The first is the light of an external hard drive that has 1TB of hard disk space on it. As technology advances, even the lights signifying that the device is connected become aesthetically pleasing. The second is the power light of a desktop speaker system, something that did not exist until after the personal computer was popularized. The final picture brings us back to what makes all of our technology possible. This is the power light of a power strip. At the end of the day, the reason we were able to do so many incredible things with the technology of today is something that existed before every one of us attending college here were born. Power. My strongest suite would be the first trilogy. It perfectly exemplifies how important technology has become to us, how much it affects our lives, and how wont we are to ignore everything else as a result of it, while at the same time showing that we have taken it for granted. I placed these images close to the beginning to help set the tone for the essay. While they are located near the beginning, they are the middle of the essay. They depict exactly what I intended my theme to be. Every image after that has to do with what can be taken from those images—they are the "outro" to the essay. Technology is an incredible tool, that we use to do so many everyday things. It's too bad we take it for granted.
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