Professionalism with dimensions

At the beginning of this unit, the idea of the 3-D professional was introduced... After the first read I thought, "...yeah! we're different than a trade school... highly trained, highly focused conservatory," then I read it again and had a different thought: technically, all professions are three dimensional, or "dimensional" for that matter. Even being a cashier at the grocery store, you have to remember things such as customer service, self presentation, bagging groceries, etc. Being an artist just adds another dimension. I think that the moment you let yourself think that you have a one dimensional job, or role in anything, you've let yourself settle. One dimensional job leads to a monotonous day, friends, relationship, life.. Spice it up a little! Speaking of dimensions, this unit similarly expanded the the dimensions of  my composition projects and not just creatively.. All this talk of copyright law reminded me that copyright laws aren't "big scary things for when I'm older", as I used to think, they effect me right here and right now and will for a long time. I felt that I stretched myself in terms of creativity and skill this unit because I am completely out of my element in audio editing. I have had little experience with audio material other than putting songs on my iPod.

Now that I know a little better how to work with audio, I ended up choosing the creative route with this week's assignment. I figured that since I'd be spending some quality time with these sounds I would choose an uplifting theme: happiness.  In my composition, I feel that I touched on the living, composing, perceiving, and representing contexts. I chose sounds that I felt "meant" happiness in one way or another. I composed them to fit attractively together, I perceived them to be happiness, and intrinsically many of them represent happiness in stereotypes. With this type of assignment I believe that the principle interactionism plays an especially important role because in an audio setting the composer plays with how the sounds interact with each other and most importantly the listener. A sound may be beautiful played simply by itself, but when combined with another the result could be absolutely horrid. A successful project of this nature has mastered, at some level, interactionism. I used a program(Audactiy) to create this composition. This time around I did not have any DIY aspect, other than the composing; however, last week when we created our own recordings I engaged in the DIY aspect of composing.  
After doing this project, I have a new appreciation for sound editors because I got frustrated easily when things wouldn't line up how I wanted them! Also trying to work within copyright "safe" material was very inhibiting. That being said, this has sparked my creative eye and I can't wait to collaborate with dance and combine these two composition skills.  Overall, this work probably isn't my life masterpiece BUT this is where I'm at with this skill right now. I plan on continuing with audacity, or other sound editors, in the future and this project is simply a mark for where I'm starting.