ALGC PROJECTS

Though I've already said this so many times, in so many different ways, 2022 really has been an amazing year - between the trips I've gotten to take, and wonderful people I've connected with, to all the projects I've gotten to work on, words cannot express how truly grateful I am for the last 12 months. I was originally planning on making a video out of this, but it ended up not fitting in with my very busy upcoming upload schedule, so instead I will be taking some time to reflect on a truly incredible year of projects in this dispatch!

 

A Story Dying To Be Told: Sark

This year started out with a bang; after almost five months of not uploading any videos, I finally managed to put together a video project explaining the history of the island of Sark, located off the coast of France in the English Channel which, until 2008, was governed under the feudal system.

Aerial view of the island of Sark, circa 2005 (Wikipedia)

On top of being the first video I did this year, the Sark project was also the first video I'd ever done where I actually talked to a camera with no script. Previously, in my stop-motion and pixel art animation videos, I had written out a script of whatever story I wanted to tell, and then recorded it, all before any music or animations had been done. The same was supposed to be true for the Sark project, which began in July 2021 as an 8-Bit Explained project slated to be released sometime in October. But for a variety of reasons, (the fact that the script was taking a much longer time than usual to get right, I was already kind of burnt out after pretty much eight straight months of 8-Bit videos, each of which got progressively more complicated and technically challenging, etc.) that never happened, and I ended up taking an extended break from video projects.

 

Sark was far from the only video project that I ended up scrapping in 2021 (in late July when I uploaded my last 8-Bit video, I had four or five others in various stages of production), but it was the only one that stuck in my head for so long. It was just too perfect a story not to tell at some point, and so in January, after six months of rambling about this random island to my friends along with many failed script drafts and story boards, I got fed up, and decided to just sit down in front of a camera in my closet, and tell the story cold.

 

Looking back on the Sark project, it seems like the beginning of a new phase of videos on my channel which, though they may be of lower technical production value, are much easier and more fun to put together, and better fit my typically spontaneous creative process.

 

Bookbinding: ALGC Journal No. 7

In June, when I set off for Europe with my Latin class, I really had no idea what to expect. For ten days I got almost no sleep, ate and drank pretty much nothing but pizza, lemon Fanta, and airport snacks, as we were hastily shuttled through across the world. But when I got home, I had incredible memories to last a lifetime, and a full journal! Thus began one of my favorite summer projects: the creation of a new hand-bound notebook.

Top-down view of the first two hand-bound journals I made

I first started experimenting with bookbinding in June 2020, after a few months of pandemic boredom. Now, two and a half years later, the tradition is still going strong, and I've improved a lot at the construction of these journals. So it was only natural to eventually make a video out of it!

 

As of today, the new notebook is still going strong, and I've filled about 1/3 of it's pages!

 

Capturing Summer: Film Photography

Another one of my favorite projects from this summer was my experiments with film photography, which started shortly after the bookbinding project. I had already owned a film camera for years, given to me by a family friend pre-loaded with a roll of Kodak 400 film, so all I really had to do in the beginning was pick up the camera and muster the courage to hit the shutter.

 

I later moved onto some rolls of Fujifilm 200, which I filled walking around town, and also during my trip to Japan in August.

 

All in all, I'm super pleased with the pictures I took over summer, and the skills I developed taking these has also helped enormously in the Photography class I've been taking at school this year, where my technical knowledge of film photography has expanded greatly:

 

 

Book Reports: Reexamining The Seminal Catastrophe

Also during the summer I got to read some incredible books, my favorite being "The World of Yesterday" by Stefan Zweig (you can hear more about the books I read this year in my recent video, 'Reviewing Every Book I read in 2022') which, despite or perhaps because of its age, remains one of the most wonderfully written and relevant narratives I've ever come across. While reading, I would practically jump out of my chair every five minutes in sheer amazement at the humble and quiet but roaring power of Zweig's prose. I could tell that this was a book he never wanted to write, because it essentially documents how the world, in his eyes, had destroyed itself over the course of his lifetime, and why he'd basically given up hope on things. Reading it in decades later however, feeling like the world is once again coming undone, it felt as though I was sitting up late talking anxiously with a dear friend, though our circumstances are so different, it gave me a great sense of hope and wonder.

 

As a result of how much I loved this book, it makes sense why I'm so irrationally fond of the video essay I produced about it over summer. It's definitely not the best video I've made this year, (I'm really not a fan of how I edited it, and I did a horrible performance of the script) but the essay remains, in my opinion, one of the best things I wrote this year, and I'm very proud of it.

 

Unrehearsed Tragedy: Prometheus Bound

The fifth and final project to which I would like to give the spotlight today is the unrehearsed performance of Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound" that I did with my friend Kate Woodhall in November. Not only was it super fun to do but it was also (for whatever unknowable algorithmic reason) the best performing video I uploaded this year (currently sitting at 220 views). It was a really cool experiment, and I definitely think that I'll put on more unrehearsed play performances, and other theatre-related projects in the coming year! If you haven't already seen it, and you've got a lot of free time this evening, you can check it out here!

 

 

That concludes my 2022 Project Reflection! I'm pretty sure this will be my last website post of the year, so happy holidays and happy new year everyone! Thank you so very much for reading, watching, and continuing to support everything that I do! It truly means the world to me. I couldn't be more excited for the new year, and all the changes, challenges, and projects that it shall bring.

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-ALGC