project

altmed final project from Alana Melton on Vimeo.

Above is the video I made for my final project. I decided to take the idea of a YouTube curation and transport it to Flickr, the photo sharing site (and, incidentally, a site apparently founded by a Vassar grad). Since it's the end of the year I'm thinking a lot about going back home, but I'll only be spending two weeks there total. So in getting a little nostalgic, I decided to browse Flickr for photos of Los Angeles. The photos in the video are in no way my own; they were taken by complete strangers. I only used images I had download access to. And as many of you are aware, Flickr's images are available for use by others via Creative Commons. (Admittedly I don't think I'm following CC quite right but my guess is that since this is not for profit it's okay...my knowledge of IP law is sadly lacking.)

So here's the premise: String together these communally available images of my home "town" taken by strangers to create a vision of Los Angeles I can uniquely recognize as my own. Implicit in this is the creation of an idea of home, once again, through the lens of, say, city agencies, foreign visitors, or people just like me who regularly crawl along the 405. The concept of home, for reasons I'd rather not get into here, is especially hard for me to define. I had to move from one part of the city to the other (it's not so simple) about a year and a half ago and I realized in making this that I still call home a street I haven't been able to bring myself to drive down. I also noticed how much I identified with particular streets and freeways, something that seemed crazy to my friend from Philadelphia but something I think other Angelenos would understand.

Lastly, if you do watch this, do pay attention to the image of the 76 station located a few blocks from my old house. Regular is $4.05—the photo is from the past month. Makes me glad I won't be driving this summer.

alana