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.