FMX 463 - Multimedia and Installation Art

For project 2, I wanted to go on a little bit more of serious route with my projection mapping. Considering we are using space as one of the main aspects of this installation, I wanted to find something that reaches deep on the most simple levels. For this project, I plan to use my bedroom for my environment and focus on the idea of rape and sexual assault prevention. This is a topic that I hold very dear to my heart that I feel people like to put on the back burner because it makes them uncomfortable. I want this project to make people feel a certain way and to start a conversation about sexual assault prevention. I want to map out my bedroom as a sort of dungeon, juxtaposing the ideas of safe space and a dangerous space. I want it to symbolize how the safest place, like your bedroom, can instantly become a nightmare due to being sexually assaulted there. I want to use videos of what represent the before, the during, and after sexual assault. TIMELINE WEEK OF OCT 1 - Film/Collec...

For the last 6 years, I have been in love with music festivals. My Junior year of high school is when I fell in love with the feeling I got when in attendance of a festival called Lollapalooza. I never understood the pure joy and unbelievable energy that flows through these festivals and the people that attend there. Since my junior year, I have now attended 14 music festivals across the country, ranging from camping festivals, to day festivals, to even just night shows. I have come to know that these festivals have become my happy place. For my first installation project, I wanted to try and portray what type of events happen during these festivals and how intense the feelings are that go along with them. I believe that being immersed in the music while letting your body be open to do what it wants to do while you're around people you love who also love the same thing as you is extremely freeing. I wanted to portray these emotions and this type of feeling so people can understan...

For this artist research assignment, I wanted to find an artists that had a style similar to what my first project will be like. I searched for a while until I came across Camille Utterback's installation titled "Light Field." This piece focuses on combined custom made, hand-blown glass pieces with digital projection mapping. The whole purpose of this piece is that when the background is blacked out, the light that is projected onto the glass is floating, embedded in glass chips. This piece was very fascinating to me because through all of my artistic life, I have always been in love with lighting. I used a Pixel Stick in my AP 2D-Design class in high school and focused on the projection of self within light. I have used light shows in my coding work and now will be using light shows in my projection work. I think that amazing, authentic lighting is the key to making bold art with vibrant color, strong meaning, and force. Light can be used to depict so many different fe...

 For my first project, I want to head in the direction of explaining the euphoric feeling of being in a crowd at a music festival. Music festivals are a safe space for me and are a place where I truly feel myself. The music, the lights, the people, the energy, and the vibes are so amazing at these festivals that it has been a main focus in my art in the past as well. I want to use this project as an experimental way to show the thrill and ride that is being at a festival. I might dive into the drug culture of festivals too and try and show how much of a scary world they can be if done wrong. 

My name is Micheal Wheeler and I am a senior Digital Arts Major at the University of Tampa. I am originally from Chicago, Illinois and desperately left that place due to the snow...Palm trees definitely treat me a lot nicer. In the art artworld, I love digital illustration and interior design, as well as a little creative coding. I used to do most of my work on Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver, but have now started doing most of my work on my 13" iPad Pro. I am a full-time student whenever I'm not serving tables at Roccos's Tacos and Tequila Bar and actively participate on my campus. I am the Risk Prevention and Wellness Director for my fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, and also serve as the Director of Philanthropy for Order of Omega, the National Greek Honors Society at UT. I am really looking forward to this class because I have never done anything like this before in all my years of art. It makes me really excited because I love learning about new mediums b...