Exploration 2.0 - HW

Date: Friday, 07/10/2026

Class: Exploratory Making (IMALR-GT 106)

Section: 001 (Beth)

Name: Janice Vuong

The three deep listening exercises that you did.

Hi! This is my blog post for IMALR-GT 106 (Exploratory Making) for Exploration 2.0 (Gift). I feel weird not having a salutation before starting an entry (so I might start each blog moving forward with a greeting a lot).

Completely honest :((( I spent Wednesday (07/08) evening (ideating) and Thursday (07/09) evening (looking at inspiration), and then Friday finishing my interpretation of the gift from Tiffany (Grace) at 9:35 PM. When I finally looked at the submission form, I did a quick check on the homework criteria. Which then I realized there was reading assigned with the blog post, that I completely did not realize, and I am sorry because said reading was essential before the “making” process as a response to the gift, but I as I am writing this I already made the gift so :(((((((

Bonus: Did it influence how you engaged with your gift?

Now looking through the reading (Deep Listening, A Composer’s Sound Practice), I sort of practice some forms of deep listening when I try to focus on an important task at hand. When I get into a “flow” / engaged state, I tend to either play the same song on a loop (I’m talking about at least 50 times, until I finish the assignment/task). Or I have total silence in my apartment and work non-stop (referencing page 25 of Sound/Silence exercise). On Wednesday/Thursday/and Friday I had no music playing in my apartment and just ideated/created in silence. I say silence, because my apartment is pre-war and does not face a busy street, so it is pretty quiet already.

The gift that you received from your gifting partner (short summary)

The gift I received from Tiffany S (Grace) is Swingtop Lighter made by Craighill. Tiffany saw the lighter from a Youtube short by Craighill in their pursuit of creating a more ergonomic and sustainable lighter. Since most lighters are hard to push to create flame for the user. Also the starter of most Bic lighters can burn a user’s thumb trying to ignite a flame. The Swingtop Lighter that Craighill created features a swingarm away from your thumb, and ignites the flame. It also is refillable (most lighters tend to be disposable.

How you engaged with the gift / what did you make / medium I used

I engaged with the gift in 3 stages. On Wednesday (07/08), after receiving the gift, I spent ideating. Looking at the product page on Craighill, the swing arm of the lighter, reminded me of the lever of a slot machine so that became the basis of the art piece I would create. Thursday (07/09), for some reason I spent 2 hours looking at animation tutorials, Adobe Animate, Adobe After Effects. Yet those videos were anywhere from 25 minutes to 40 minutes showing the basics, I quickly learned that:

There was no way I would be able to learn the skills to animate within 1 hour
I still had not created anything, and this assignment is due tomorrow
Why am I trying to create something in a medium that I am not super familiar with

Friday (07/10) and I still have the urge to make this art piece interactive. The name of this program is *Interactive* Media Arts Low Res. The pieces/work I created in the past tend to be static (graphics) and I felt in this homework assignment I wanted to change that!

I changed directions and thought of making a GIF! I had never made a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) before, yet I realize if I can create a few frames together, and I know how to edit videos, that should be basically a GIF right??

Photographs, descriptions, or the actual piece itself.

I knew I wanted to make the slot machine, using the same colors as the Swingtop Lighter. I also wanted that the winning combination to display “3 flames”, since the original gift is a lighter, and lighters create flames = flame emoji.

Body of the Swingtop Lighter = same HEX color (#B7B3AE) for the Slot Machine
Red top of Swing arm = same HEX color (#EC4706) for the Lever Ball of the Slot Machine
I even reference the same HEX colors of the shadows (#A6A298) of the body of the Swingtop lighter to use to make the darker rim of the Slot Machine.

I created a series of 5 frames in Paint.NET. According to Wikipedia, Paint.NET is a freeware graphic editor program. I have been using this program since I was like 12, making silly digital “clothing pieces” for online children’s platform. There are plug-ins, layers, tools, etc. I really should have learned Photoshop and Illustrator by now because it would have made my life much easier, but this is what I am stuck with.

Draft: Doodle of the 5 frames

I drew the slot machine lever positions in the middle, and in this drawing, I used triangles as icons/reference for flame position (drawing flames are hard).

How do I make a GIF??????? 😟

After trying like 3 web-based GIF/frame-by-frame online animate tools, I am tired of downloading software and just want to try something web-based. A lot of them would not let me upload frames??? I had to draw it on the online editor??? I saw like the 7th search result, that Canva had a GIF making tool. I love/hate Canva (I can talk/write for an hour). But I was able to upload my 5 frames easily and export as a GIF so it served its purpose. 🥲

What would you do differently or add/remove if you had more time?

If I had more time (like 2 weeks?) I would want to explore Adobe Animate or After Effects. Maybe the ability to add sound-effects? As you can see, I spent all of Thursday evening trying to look at “how to animate”, “create simple animations” on YouTube and well, it didn’t help for this assignment, but maybe something to explore in a future project.