For my final project, I chose to explore the theme of nostalgia via four childhood media which resonate with me. The first piece, inspired by home video, features a vintage TV frame and colorful background which I created in Photoshop. I also created the title frame which reads “Days of My Life”, inspired by the logo and name of the TV show “Days of Our Lives.”  I then created a video in Final Cut Pro and overlaid the frame as if the TV is displaying the video. The TV acts as a way to tune in to different channels of my life, starting with a video I took when I was 8 or 9 years old. My lifelong project is documenting moments through video. In this piece, I incorporated videos from when I first started filming as well as some clips from the past few years. A majority of the clips are from 2019-2020 to demonstrate my life right before the pandemic. I collaborated with my boyfriend, Andy Cohen, who is a music producer to develop a soundtrack to accompany the video.

 

The second piece, inspired by cartoons, reflects the surreal and dreamlike qualities of many of my favorite shows. Even as an adult, my favorite TV shows are cartoons, including Midnight Gospel, Regular Show, and Rick & Morty. As a kid, I grew up primarily watching Studio Ghibli films and animated series such as Hamtaro. In this piece, I painted a colorful sky and added stars and clouds. I then inserted myself to look like I’m jumping on the clouds. I wanted this piece to demonstrate how I channel my inner child through cartoons. The third piece is a rendering of a CD which reads “Sophie’s Party Mix II.” Growing up, my sister and I enjoyed creating our own playlists and burning them onto CDs. We then would decorate the cases for each and title them. I wanted to create a digital version of this, and you can click on the art to open a Spotify playlist I made. Finally, the last piece is inspired by scrapbooking. As a kid I loved scrapbooking, and I still have all of my work kept at my parent’s house. I decided to recreate a scrapbook page but make it digital and updated.

 

Together, these four pieces embody the way I interacted with the world as a kid, but also how I respond to the world around me now. This final project explores my relation to nostalgia, and reflects how I interact with my younger self even as an adult.