Fireside Chat

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I was a little apprehensive about the Fireside chat at first. I thought it would go super long and I would be super tired and not want to be there. I had an absolute blast. It was such an enriching experience to get to see all of my classmates perform and get to see what they had created and what they came up with. It was fun and entertaining and I was completely wrong about what I though the experience was going to be.

When deciding what I wanted to do for the fireside chat the only things I was sure of for a long time is that I wanted to play a vinyl. Vinyl records mean so much to me and a lot of the ones I own are sentimental in multiple ways. I love vinyls because they are all about connection and tangibility and then have scratches and static but you forgive them for those small imperfections because you love them. This was the fundamental belief that I wanted to communicate; the belief that you have to be able to give and receive love past imperfections and mistakes. That is when I knew that I had to tell the story of my brother , my family, and I. I wasn’t trying to be like “oh look how righteous I am”, it wasn’t about that at all. It was just the biggest moment in my life where I can look back and see where that belief formulated and the gratitude I have for that belief now.  I decided to play the Jackson 5 record with the song I’ll be there because that best demonstrated the love that my brother did/does have for me and how he just made one little mistake. I wore the overalls and the hat because that is how I dressed when I was 12 and wanted people to be able to look at me as a little kid and be able to tell that I was relating a story that was from my own past and better be able to empathize and see what occurred through the eyes of a child.

I was super nervous at sharing something so personal for fear of judgment, but that was the best part about eh fireside chat was that we all just have this love and understanding for one another and really open up.  Like I said before, it was great to get to watch everyone and I feel a lot closer to the class (yeah yeah that’s pretty corny) because people were being so open and just going for it I think that allowed those that followed to be more comfortable and to express the real them a little more in their performance. 

Concerned Citizen

http://youtu.be/7mO4HqMwK6o

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Our concerned citizen started out as a single individual and by the time the project was done, we felt it was unfair to focus on the individual when we both felt that it was a community effort in this BYU/Provo City Easter Egg Hunt. There were so many collaborators, staff members and volunteers that showed up to this event and set up for hours. They knew the hunt would maybe last 10 minutes. The concerned citizen is the community as a whole. Who says it has to be one? Who says that any one person should be spotlighted for this group effort?

We pieced the interviews together to make the basis of sound. Though the editing process we discovered that we wanted there to be multiple interviews form several workers and that for out “concerned citizen” the project manager just wouldn’t do anymore.  We decided to do a very noticeable and very deliberate increase of saturation with each clip to visually demonstrate the importance and the selflessness and understanding that grows within each interview.  Each realization, each citizen understands the purpose behind the egg hunt, the ideal of community and the ultimate purpose of children and the home was represented within the saturation increase.

We were also inspired from a certain quote form the text. The reading stated, “chose to have a soft approach to change, a smooth, non-violent, gradual pace: no wars, no conflicts, no denial of rights; dialogue, understanding and empowerment of rights instead.” We implemented that in both the editing with the color gradient and the focus of the subject matter. How important the next generation is. There can be no better use of service and community welfare than on the youth.  The particular part of the quote that really stuck us was “a soft, smooth, non-violent, gradual pace.” The way to improve out communities and our future is small and simple things to do within the family and to do with your children. How simple and easy an egg hunt is to go to and how many memories and feelings of love there are that are communicated within that 2 hours. Hundreds of people work for months to give that. They give way more work than children give back, obviously as it isn’t in a child’s nature, and they do it knowing that it’s for the good of the family.

The technicality to the piece was inspired by Moulin Rouge!. The coloring within the film directs your thoughts and emotions behind each scene. The playing off of red and blue as heaven and hell. They communicate so much through color and though it is obviously not utilized in such a perfect way such as in Moulin Rouge! But the basic concept was inspired from that film. The power of coloring even if seems more abstract and theatrically it can have a very realistic effect on people.  

Protest Poster

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The protest poster I designed was focused on the digital world that we live in and the lack of connections we make because of that world and the distractions. How often is it that we get bored and pull out our phone to entertain us. Do we ever just sit down and look around, watch the people around, us the sky, the Earth and just take it all in. We have to be constantly engaged and many people talk of the amazing progress in social connect ability that this creates. I think it inhibits the natural social process however. With websites and apps such a as tinder, I feel like the youth of today is all too much consumed in social media and digital connections that they don’t take the time to look up and watch the people around them getting to make friends through live verbal communication. We are propelling towards progress and email and social media has allowed people to connect to others across the world and keep in contact to those form the past that they otherwise would not be able to, but I do feel that we are getting rid of past communication all too quickly.

I created my posters to be kind of hard to look at at first, signifying the communication barriers that youth are now facing in today’s face to face world. I used two quotes from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, because I feel like this is a film that the generation that I’m reaching out to has seen and will understand. Also in this film Ferris and his friends go out into the city and make connections and formulations and memories and don’t have this urge to document is digitally and are not distracted by constant facebook updates. They live completely in the moment not inhibited by the distractions of vibrations coming form their pockets. I used pictures of kids on their phones at sporting events and at a museum because there are places that are visited by characters in the movie and that the characters have meaningful experiences with because of their dedicated attention to the subject before them instead of being torn between theses two worlds constantly having to multitask and keep up with the social world that is naturally occurring around them in those moments.

When I posted this to my facebook, twitter and Instagram I got quite a bit of feedback. Mainly people where pointing out how hypocritical it was of me to post something like that on a social media site, and that is completely true.  I also got called out on the fact that I run a social media department for BYU Athletics, which makes me feel a little bit hypocritical but manly more informed/passionate about his issue. Nothing bugs me more than people out together as friends/lovers/family that re on their phones completely ignoring one anther, and I have done this/experienced this first hand because of my job and I don’t like it. Social Media is my job but it shouldn’t be my life. It shouldn’t be anyone’s because then you are living through a screen and through actual memories and experiences. The video we watched for the weeks viewing, she talked about the importance of not having just one story about going out and partaking and getting an appetite of multiple narratives. By partaking in social media you get to see a lot of autobiographical narratives and stories form around the world, which by all means is important, however I think its more important to not limit your self to one story; to not let yourself only have partake of a narrative because you are so distracted by a little screen in the bug expanse that is the actual live and socially thriving world.

This is what inspired me. I encourage EVERYONE to check it out. I firmly believe in what this video has to say.

http://vimeo.com/49425975

Webspinna

https://soundcloud.com/april-joyner/aj-webspinna

(You might have to turn it up, it got really quiet on Sound cloud!)


ARTIST STATEMENT

When I first approached the assignment, I wanted to look for sounds that would sound great together, make a beautiful song, and be really impressive. Then I really wanted to represent a theme or s storyline instead of having something that is just seamless and audibly much more coherent.  We talk about inspiration and the environment that surrounds us when we are inspired. I currently have 4 girls sleeping in my living room and they were watching a chick flick late one night and talking about the process of relationships and how there really are these steps and these concrete progressions. Also based on current personal circumstances in my life I decided that I want to tell the most basic progression of a relationship trough my webspinna.

The first song is like someone seeing someone across the room that steals their attention and then the heartbeat of asking them out or having conversations with them.  The Andy Griffith theme song then comes into play. This isn’t as seamless a transition that I wouldn’t have liked, however the point it that ideal since of security and happiness when you date someone. Then the quotes of expressing love. The bells represent wedding bells. The beat that comes into repeat is supposed to show the routine like nature of the relationship at that point. The children laughing obviously represent children coming into the relationship. The Elvis song was used to emphasis the still very much “in love” aspect of a relationship, however I wanted to play under the scene from Gone with the Wind of the break up, because a lot of tines in most relationships there is still love and admiration just it just comes down to the pain that one person has cause the other and that fact that one person may still be in love but the other, “Doesn’t give a damn”. The thunder is to symbolize the storm of the break up and then the last song has this sadder basic beat that seems also very routine like to represent the routine that many individuals have to reformulate after a break up because their normality has been shattered.  

Though I found the other reading on eclecticism very interesting 9and very much like I was reading something Dean Duncan would say in lecture) the form of the DJ spooky reading really got to me. I like how it was all cyclical yet new at the same time. I liked that every time you touch on a word it was different and kind of never ending. I felt like relationships are very similar. They are cyclical but there is always something new and you don’t know what to expect and it may match what was before and it may not. I used this in my webspinna by not being afraid to use different genres of music and stray for one singular set sound or style.

BomBom by Macklemore kept we thinking of the webspinna. It’s a instrumental song he does and it combines various sounds and styles of music and goes through this spectrum of emotions. It doesn’t really stick to one set type of song. Though as I listen to BomBom I wish that my webspinna was more seamless and more musically flowing that I had made it.  Also Macklemore can be pretty cynical and I definitely ended my webspinna with a cynical tone about love. 

Webspinna Test links

https://soundcloud.com/interkydd/drum-line

http://www.soundjay.com/heartbeat-sound-effect.html

http://www.buttonbeats.com/

http://fozzy42.com/SoundClips/Themes/TV/AndyGriffifth.wav

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Jerry_Maguire_sounds

http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/10700417/wedding-bells-street-hubbub-outside-church.html

http://www.incredibox.com/en/#/application

http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/display/sounds.cfm/sound_group_iid.469

http://soundbible.com/tags-thunder.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V430M59Yn8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2RxWs60dRM&feature=related

http://soundbible.com/tags-thunder.html

https://soundcloud.com/leprechauntunes/sad-instrumental

http://5secondfilms.com/watch/the_best_breakup_line_ever

Media Specificity

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I wanted to focus on Literature and specifically within literature I wanted to focus on the aspect of the medium that deals with sentence structure and words. No other medium uses the written language with such a force as literature. No other medium is so dependent upon the formulations and organization of words as literature is.

My idea was to take a couple pages of an already established piece of literature and rewrite a new story within the book by rearranging the words and crossing out some of the text. I often find that when I am reading, sometimes I miss a word a two or even a whole page and the story changes dramatically and what I then take away from that medium is altered. By doing so, I wanted to point out how within literature sentence structure and words are up for interpretation and rearrangement by the reader. The author does not have complete control; it is up to the reader to interpret the text in a way that works for them and in a way that the words formulate for them.  So to represent this I took a story already told and told a new one by using on the selected words that I, the reader wanted to see.

When reading the articles about the modern art paint exhibits and the editor not understanding them, I began to think about how this is also a common practice within literature, but the viewers have more power to alter their and the actual perception of the book. It’s easy to read something and not understand it but unlike paintings, there is such a long process to engulfing yourself in the art that your brain could easily rearrange words and meanings within sentence structures to formulate a new meaning that flows better with your interior thought process.

This may not necessarily be considered another form of media, but this project led me to think about the magnetic poetry that people have on their fridges and how  it’s just a group of words that people can come up and arrange however they want and then they have a story and others can come up and change one word and it’s a completely different story. The concepts are very similar between my project and this interior-decorating item.

Textual Poaching

Beat. Beat.

Drum. Guitar.

You are proud to listen to yours

While I can only glorify mine if its behind closed doors

Tell me of its bad influence and scare

But listen close and tell me which one is more bare

Condemn me for the way it sounds

But don’t you listen a single bound

Yours sounds like honeying sweet

But see, the lyrical dirt doesn’t miss a beat

Assume it’s loud and reckless too

Though your talks more of who to do

Judge me not I guess does not apply

Your not even smart enough to see the why

You go one listening to more and more

While I must be a little whore

Artist Statement:

My name is April, and I am a metalhead. I love screamo music, emo music, and punk music. People often look at me and say that that’s not possible. They look at the way I live my life and say that if I listened to the kind of music that I claim I do I would have piercing and tattoos and use profanity as my only way of communication. People seem to think that if a song screams then it must be negative message. If a song is happy, poppy, and from a well known artist with a mainstream, then it MUST be good and MUST contain a better message than from a band that has boys with long black hair. 

The piece I made is a compilation of several pictures. The main picture in the background is a group of Beatles fans standing outside one of their concerts. I wanted to take the fans and replace their love for the Beatles and change it into bands that are typically considered to be loved only by drug addicts and hippies. I wanted to point out that these clean cut individuals could appreciate the music that comes from bands such as the Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Blink 182, if they would just take the time to look around the stereotype and listen to the lyrics of the music produced.

I wanted the image to looked very thrown together. I wanted it to look like things were out of place—because according to society they are. People who are good and upstanding individuals can’t possibly like NOFX and Bad Religion? That’s absurd, correct? I feel like there is such a stigma to metalheads, especially in Provo. This is where the poem comes in. It is something that I wrote just to get my frustrations out about how many people judge me for the music I listen to, without even knowing the lyrics, and glorify this pop music that sounds cheerful but is much more dangerous and threatening to the LDS standards than screamo. It all comes down to preconceived perceptions, stereotypes, and societal standards that have been around for years but have no right or authority to dictate our lives and the interpretations of the events around us.