Audio Recording

For this project we were asked to create an audio piece that presented a process. Although many processes have very interesting sounds, my partner and I were drawn to the idea of showing the sounds of a human process. We had seen several documentaries in class that showed processes, but most of them were interesting, not because of the process, but because as we watched the process performed we learned more about the individuals who were involved. This is why I was interested in recording a process that highlighted the subject’s process over the performed process. 

Thinking about human processes, we discussed some ideas such as fights and apologies, but landed on the idea of acceptance. That is, allowing things to happen in our life that are hard at first. In life, you can see that children rarely do this, they are set in what they like and don’t like and what they will do and what they won’t. Yet as adults we choose to cross those lines and put ourselves through things that we aren’t okay with at first; such as eating foods that don’t taste good, going to work even when it’s hard, providing service for others, or visiting people we don’t get along with. This is a process we go through all the time and we all have our own ways of doing it: sometimes we just take a big breath and leap into action or we talk ourselves through it one step at a time. This process we recorded is one person’s experience with working through something they don’t want to do; it is true to life, non-scripted and not exaggerated.

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

Tiny Stories: Idioms

Atop a bell tower, Faust was only saved from the masked knifeman when the clock finally struck one. 

 The Scarecrow King was never one to show any mercy; still, his second in command was aghast as he forwarded the command to leave no prisoners alive.

The wise farmer would never sell his milk cow to the butcher, no matter the offer. No one-time fee could compensate the income the cow brought him daily. 

As the sugar cookies auditioned for the play, it was apparent that Penelope was not cut out for the role of Annie.

 Ponyo was not a soldier; she let the searing pain overtake her. She barely noticed becoming engulfed in the lake. As she lost consciousness, her friends caught her and rocked her to sleep.

 For this project, I found inspiration in idioms. We use them every day but for the most part we have lost touch with their origins and we don’t really understand what they mean. If we weren’t used to hearing them every day we would realize how silly some of them sound. To further this statement, each story/picture is based on an idiom, the idiom is applied figuratively (as it would be used as an idiom) as well as literally, to show how the phrases themselves are different than what you think while using them. Some idioms are clear, some take some deducing. Some I discovered while looking through lists of idioms, and I hadn’t ever realized before that they were idioms, even though I’d used them in every day conversation.

I use photoshopped images because my own hand cannot get me anywhere near the images that are created in my mind. I also hoped that it would make a nice blend of the real and less real images, because that is how I'm using the idioms, realistically and figuratively.

I saw strong connections between this idea and what Dillard wrote about seeing. Blind people appreciated the world in their ways, through their other senses, and when they first gained sight many things baffled them and they couldn’t make sense of it. Yet, when they began to really understand their surroundings through sight they gained new understanding, such as the girl who realized that men didn’t look like trees. Likewise, I used idioms to make my speech stronger or to make connections with other people-- then I began to realize what I was saying, and some idioms don’t make much sense literally, and that threw me off. I didn’t understand the speech anymore. Yet, when I looked further to find the origin of the phrase, I was often pleasantly surprised at the interesting stories. 

As I was working on this project, several people referred me to a man on the internet who has a series about idioms. He is from Germany and he does not understand the levels of meanings in idioms, he only gets the literal meaning, which as we said can be confusing and funny. He makes fun of the phrases and he, like my project, points out to us that we haven’t thought much about the phrases we use. However, I think he still misses something from not finding out the origin and appreciating that story. Idioms give a lot of color to our language, but they mean a lot more if you understand where they come from and how to properly use them.

Always with you, Always with me

These images were created or compiled and altered by myself. They were inspired by the song “Always with you, always with me” by Joe Satriani. In class we discussed storytelling as an imperative tool in maintaining our humanity in such a consumer driven society. I found it interesting that when I listened to this song, I did not feel a narrative story being told-- although some others might. I did, however, feel that there were still storytelling elements in the song. I feel most music is telling the story of an emotion, or perhaps the emotion of a story, without giving us concrete details. Therefore, when I was creating my still images that were supposed to represent the song, I found myself creating non-sequitur, non-narrative images; but, each image encompassed the emotion I felt at some point in the song. A common phrase among musicians, that I learned after I created my project, is “the purpose of music is to communicate emotion.” I suppose that I agree with that statement and that the musicians I have listened to have held that goal in mind. The emotions I felt from this song were feelings of love, from the musician to a woman. I felt, though, that the woman was not with him-- it was a love from afar, or she had died. I did feel that the love was requited all the same. I felt the devotion was being adored, or celebrated in the music, even if there is a twinge of sadness at times that they were not together. I felt all this being conveyed through the instruments, as if the only way for the artist to externalize such feelings is through the rigorous training of the guitar and feeding himself through it. My pictures reflect the bond with the instruments, the fun of love, the distance and intrigue of the woman, while trying to incorporate some of the textures I felt throughout the song.

The Song:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4fPv450OYM