Blog Feed

Reflection

1. For my projects I decided to do journals. These journals are Lady Macbeth’s. They show how Lady Macbeth’s character changes throughout the story.
2. I wanted to do these journals so the reader can better understand the character of Lady Macbeth. In the story it seems as if she doesn't really have a heart. She seems cold and cruel. I wanted to show the readers that Lady Macbeth does have feelings and does regret her actions. I did these journals by incorporating quotes from the story.
3. It was hard to come up with creative ideas and it was also hard managing time. Usually teachers give immediate deadlines, but we had complete control over what we wanted to do.
4. I’m proud to see my writing progress.
5. If I could I would have started the project earlier.
6. My colleagues’ projects were all outstanding. From them learned that they’re are so many ways to show case work. I saw projects that I would never have thought of doing. 
7. I learned that I should stop putting limits on what I can do and excel.

The small orbs on the top of each box were painted with specific colors. I referred to a mood-ring chart to show Lady Macbeth's various emotions throughout the play ranging from stormy and passionate to lonely and paranoid. I set the boxes in descending order by height to visually show her downfall, and because the boxes had lids and could be opened, I put the quotes that I analyzed for that specific body paragraph in each box and I was done. 

The process for my project was actually rather timely; it only took about an hour and a half to finish and I did so the night before with ample time left in the night for me to sleep. The only problems I encountered during the creation of this project were gluing pieces in the wrong order and having to reorder things, mixing colors to properly coincide with those on the mood chart, printing problems, and actually getting my project to school. However, there were very few learning walls and mind-blocks for me to experience. 

In my classmates projects, I saw a deep thoughtfulness throughout. The artistic qualities of my classmates and the ability to be as innovative as some were was extremely noticeable. I appreciate their hard work and I feel that there was a level 'playing-field'. No projects were absolutely utterly mind-blowingly incredible, but no projects were dull, drab, or pointless.

For my project I chose to do a continuation of my written piece. In my written piece I talk about how Macbeth was not always a bad guy. At the beginning of the book he was a good person. It was only through being provoked and triggered into changing that Macbeth changed his personal traits and became such an evil person. To represent this I started by making Macbeth's head. The head that I made is similar to the head that is shown at the end of the Macbeth movie. Then to show all of Macbeth's triggers I made small sculptures of the triggers and placed them on Macbeth's head to symbolize the fact that Macbeth was only taking action based on what other people inspired him to do, not because his own brain told him that these actions were okay. For Act 1, the trigger that I chose was Lady Macbeth; for Act 2, the trigger was the crown and the role of kingship; for Act 3, the trigger was the Weïrd Sisters; for Act 4, the trigger was Malcolm; and for Act 5, the trigger was the kingdom and everything that comes with being king (wealth, power, followers, etc.). The hardest part of this project was coming up with the idea. Once I had the idea the project was relatively easy. The only trouble I had was deciding which things I would pick as the triggers for each act, and also making the sculptures. If I could do this project again, I would put more work into making the sculptures better.

This project was the creative part of an academic quote analysis of Macbeth. I personally chose to write a song because I am a pianist and I found this an effective way to communicate the downfall of Lady Macbeth. While she was not the tragic hero in this play, she is one of Shakespeare's only strong female characters. She was power hungry and then manipulated her husband into killing people for the crown. This eventually lead to her ultimate demise as the guilt became too much for her to deal with as she fell into suicidal insanity. 

There are things I would have changes about the music. I would have made a few different choices about maybe using a higher or lower key at times. I believe music is never going to be perfect and with every composing project I do there is something I would change. My music is never going to be perfect; but that's something I really appreciate about the art form. Its a constant strive for perfection we will never reach. 

I learned that I really like using music to express things; that it really is a powerful art form. I never had the chance to use music in middle school for anything academic, so coming to high school and getting to use it has really been something powerful and different. When I read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade I swore I didn't like Shakespeare; I thought it was very formal, stuffy, and irrelevant to the world today. But getting to use it in both academic and artistic mediums has made it much more powerful and interesting.