Process Piece

Listen Here:

https://soundcloud.com/april-joyner/eating-peas

Artist Statement:

For the process piece my partner and I (Hannah) really wanted to focus on the human aspect of the assignment.  We thought about doing the process of a fight, but that felt too scripted so we decided to do someone eating something they don’t like eating (which for the person we recorded was peas) We recorded them going through the entire process and then edited it down and added the heartbeat in the background.  The whole idea behind eating peas was the idea about how human it is to force yourself through something that you don’t want to do because you know that because you are an adult you just have to buckle down and do it. As discovered on the first day of class, people tend to bond over painful experiences or even just things that don’t go as planned. Eating something that you don’t like is a process that everyone can relate to in the smallest realm of  “painful experiences”. Much like the Scripture Study video we watched this week, with eating peas you have to talk yourself through it and remind yourself of the benefits of doing what you are doing. I kept being reminded of Dean and his wife choosing to go through with scripture study because they understand the long-term benefits of what they are doing and as the adults in the family they have to push through and keep up with it for the greater good.  The audio in the Routine videos inspired the addition of the heartbeat. The heartbeat is the constant rhythm throughout the audio piece, drawing an emphasis to the struggle the person recorded goes through while eating these peas by adding in the speeding up of the heartbeat. I really wanted to draw attention to that to make the listener think about how much of an actual process we put ourselves through to even do things that we don’t enjoy.

I thought about Little Miss Sunshine, Frank and Dwayne in particular, while looking back over the process piece and the idea of doing things that you don’t like because you are an adult. In that film, Frank and Dwayne go through a lot of things and do a lot of things because it’s what’s expected of them. Frank ‘s life is literally falling apart around him, yet (besides trying to kill himself) he has to act and perform to this certain protocol because that is what’s asked of him as a functioning adult in society. Dwayne also has to put himself through these situations for family and society that he doesn’t agree with. When he finds out that he is colorblind he throws this huge fit, but ultimately has to get back up, into the van and drive to the pageant—not necessarily because he wants to but because he has to and its expected of him as an older member of a family. Overall that is the wider theme of process of the piece; doing something that you don’t want to do but doing it because you know you have to. 

Tiny Stories

Billy loved to read but others told him it was better to kick a ball, so he gave himself paper cuts to stop and they all got infected.

A classmate told Amy she could never get a date if she didn't drop a few, so she pulled out all of her teeth. What good is it being skinny if you're dead?

Her parents told Rachel to remove her lip ring because no one would understand her. She refused; her dad ripped it off taking the rest of her lips with it.

Brandon's roommates called him weird for his music taste so he cut off his ears to please them, except now he can't hear their praises of his docility.

They told Josh his God was fictional. To prove them wrong he pointed a rifle to the sky. His God wasn't fictional but his God is dead.

Artist Statement:

For the 5 stories, I guess you could say I went in a more morbid direction. I initially got my inspiration from people watching. I look around and can see the automatic change in people behavior and means of carrying themselves when they think no one is watching. That began me thinking about how often the people that love us want us to be so much the version of us that they see when they look at us as an individual and how so many of us comply and it eventually kills pieces of us off. These stories represent that in a much more exaggerated way. The hand drawn images are just cartoon like pictures of the scene described in the story and the image at the bottom of each story in the name of the character spelled out in different pieces. I chose to do this because I wanted the name to really represent the identity of the characters, to show that these are indeed individuals. I wanted the names to be spelled out in pieces because I wanted to show that so many small pieces make up our identity, so that the message in the stories stands out more about killing someone by altering just the smallest thing about themselves. The names are also in color and everything else in pencil because I wanted the viewers eye to be drawn to it first, to pay attention to the identities of the characters first. The rest of the story presentation (the fact that it’s on notebook paper and written in cursive) is supposed to give off a very innocent and childlike quality to offset and counter the morbidity of the actual stories themselves. I wanted a diary/school book look to the images (though they may be my lack of drawing skills) to make the stories as intimate as possible.

Throughout the week and within the readings we talked about the origins of stories and where we can find inspiration, and I found myself looking externally for the most part and after reading the book for the second time I really felt impressed to see how looking external affected my metacognition and how I look for inspiration within. With that, these stories are inspired as much externally (form people watching) as they are internally (my own experiences in life).

As I finished the assignment I began to look at the stories with a different perspective, focusing on what the internal conflict would be inside the main characters and reflecting on what they would be saying to themselves giving in to other people’s desires.  Immediately the song Snuff by Slipknot came to mind. The specific lyrics I focused on were—

I only wish you weren’t my friend

Then I could hurt you in the end

I never claimed to be a saint

Ooh, my own was banished long ago

It took the death of hope to let you go

So break yourself against my stones

And spit your pity in my soul

You never needed any help

You sold me out to save yourself

The “I” being the characters talking to themselves. I feel like on the outside they would be hiding their true self away, giving in, because it’s easier, what others want from then, and to pleasing society. They want to get back to whom they truly are but all hope is dead and they have to let that person go. They are angry and yelling at their pretend self stating, “You sold me out to save yourself”. 

Music Mosaic

The song I chose was Greyhound by Swedish House Mafia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBRKSIj2tMc

Artist's Statement:

When listening to Greyhound, I kept hearing a heart-beat, the sound of human life connected to this slow constant building that reaches it’s climax and then breaks itself down to start all over.  The images represent that gradual shift. The colors on each change as the rectangles build bigger and bigger. The dates at the bottom represent times in my life where I felt like something new had started, that I was building upon something, where I had a new beginning. I decided to include the dates, almost outlining my current life story, because of the reading and how it really inspired me to think about how stories affect our lives and how when we look back at our memories, we remember most moments of our timeline in story format. It stated in the reading, “Stories are the secret reservoir of our values: change the stories individuals and nation live by and tell themselves and you change the individuals and nations.” I contemplated that as I completed my assignment. If you removed every single date from my life written on the bottom of the images, I would be a completely different person. My family would be different and the lives of those around us would also be affected.  I live by these events. I identify myself by them. Change them and you change me. Know them and you know me. The reading also stated, “Story has always been the way we explain our relationships and who were are.” This was the main ideal I wanted to represent with my images and including personal special dates and connecting that to the music with each of those dates corresponding to a new beginning in my life as well as a place for build up and climax within the music. I connected these images also to the song People as Places as People by Modest Mouse. To me this song is all about identity and a desire to know oneself and to know those around you. The reading commented several times on not being able to know someone but through their stories and their experiences. The lyrics in this Modest Mouse song repeat several times, “But we were the people that we wanted to know And we're the places that we wanted go Yeah, we're the places that we wanted to go”. This song addressed the issue of not really knowing the people around you, the places you want to be, and the sense of comfort and hominess that is found in the people around you becoming the places that you want to go. This song emphasis the importance of truly knowing the people around you and the negative side effects it can have it we let that fall away and don’t speak up and “Ask the Question” and soon we then find ourselves in a society with hardly any people we need to know or places we needed to go. As the reading says, this error in connection can be corrected though story which is something the images I created try to replicate in a manner very personal to my own life story.