(Re)born

This response to Howard Nemerov’s “Style” was my first poam under Limited Fork. I began the semester so very lost–not confused in the sense that I knew where to find the answers; lost. At first, I was not even sure what to do. So, I admit, I didn’t do much, that is, until I began exploring the multitude of sources provided on the course site. I discovered and listened to “Why Fork?” This awoke an awareness (albeit still very limited) to what we were to explore, and how. The answers to these seemed to be anything and everything, and in any way you’d like. We had been introduced to Nemerov’s “Style, so I started there. After deciding that I would like to work with multimedia, I recorded the pieces and constructed my first sonic essay.
There were two decisions that I had to make in order to progress. What did I want to explore? [and] How was I going to document or communicate my journey?
What did I want to explore?
I was searching for the starting line. It wasn’t until I realized that I was searching for something too lofty that I needed to simplify my project, and look at the things that I have access to around me. After a trip home, I decided to explore intimacy. Home had been struck by a series of life-altering events in the weeks coming up to the semester, and every person within the immediate family had an obligation to adjust. I wanted to track this progression. I began by gathering recordings and video of the relevant past, recording conversations with my iPhone as discreetly as possible so as to retain the natural conversation. In the meantime, I read Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein.
I listened to Stein’s reading “A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,” and “The Making of Americans,” and identified four phrases that resonated with one’s own being and feeling, and that being and feeling with someone. I extracted these four phrases as my audio track for “A Gertrude Stein Orchestration.” The phrases are repeated 4 times, each in a different order, with the first phrase remaining the same.

Along with my increased awareness in the most intimate and meaningful relationships around me, this project put me in contact with video and audio processes to create the piece. Since the beginning of the semester I have spent some time on learning adobe premiere and adobe soundbooth to produce the desired effects for communication.
Vibrations Keep Water Out of Lotus Leaves
Soon after, I read an article on the way lotus leaves vibrate on their stems to repel water from the surface. This idea of resistance had never occurred to me, and I was not necessarily sure how to handle it, but it felt an important characteristic of intimacy.
I continued to record conversations and lectures, extracting those moments I found relevant beyond the moment. While experimenting with how to translate text into a multimedia or interactive experience, and inspired by For All Seasons, I began working with kinetic typography. Then, one of the worst (or best) things happened to my work. I witnessed the crash of my 750GB external hard drive; nearly every document, photo, audio and video file lost with no recovery in sight.
Filled with anxiety, I was back searching for a starting line. I had to exercise my memory. I began hand-writing in a journal to continue my sense of awareness. I spoke about how during conversations and lectures of times I was recording I lacked presence because I knew I was capturing the moment and could return at anytime. With all of this lost, I was truly left with only a fleeting memory of the experience. I had read “The Kingdom of Infinite Space,” a work that resonated well with my background in cognitive science. It took a turn inward, about the relationship of the body and mind, and I thought maybe I could go there, too.
With Memory in mind, I turned back to writing sonic essays. I had photos from our Paper Brain/Social Construction exercise and some video left on my iPhone. Working with what media I had, I made a second video piece with an accompanying text. The video begins with photos and video captured of the paper brains. It also includes scanned images of my journal so far, superimposed onto video that captures the act of writing.

That is current state of my project. As I continue to (re)capture video, audio, photos and other media, I hope to continue to gain application experience in making videos like those that I have posted here. I feel that my project will at least begin with a continued focus on the self, awareness and memory in reference to the self. I would like to continue to incorporate and (re)orchestrate the texts and media of others (such as was done with Gertrude Stein), and discover paths through texts that are not my own. Hearing the presentations of the progress others have made held as one of the most significant moments of the class, and leaves me enthusiastic to be starting back at start with the experiences of these last fourteen weeks.

As one last night, I thought I would expand on the title of this blog. Thylias continually referred to our projects as infants, and simply with my inevitable loss, my project has returned to a stage just beyond conception.

I leave you with a script in the making for a sonic essay.

Limits & Resistances
I was, and have been, realizing limits and resistances
in myself.
The former is uncontrollable, we are only so much.
The latter, able to be broken down.
There are those universal limits,
we are all only human.
But, again, these were lofty,
over the top. I was brought back down;
To my own limits, and the difference between
limits and resistances.
My limits would by and large never change.
But what I resisted was my own doing.
Choices I was making to act out or not act out.
What was stopping me from always acting, and speaking, and responding, and making progress?
Filtering myself, looking back, and being filled with regret.
I took notice to my mind-body relationship.
How my body reacts to feelings of
tension, shyness, embarrassment, stress, fear, and so on.
My resistance was a social construction,
A crease in the brain and mind,
That could perhaps be flattened
but would never wholly vanish;
vibrations (of resistance) dialed down to a low echo.

How memories have the power to rekindle those feelings and reactions.
The power of the memory of the mind.