Thursday, January 28, 2010

Weekly Post January 28, 2010


I have been working hard on the audio component of my project, and I have put the other mediums on the side as of now (photography, collaborative project, writing).  I met with Hannah and she helped me figure out long-term and short-term goals for myself, which helped me see clearly where I need to be and when.  I like how the Marathon of Homelessness audio piece is due to in mid February, because it gives me a set deadline.   So for the next two weeks, I am going to try and make a good audio piece. 

This week I spent a considerable amount of time working on my sound piece (7 hours).  I listened to my last interview with Jay 3-4 times, and put together a 3-minute sound piece, centered on what he misses the most:  doorknobs.  I spent another hour putting together a transcript of the entire interview.   

I absolutely loved meeting the directors of the Third Coast Audio Festival. They were extremely positive and enthusiastic towards everyone’s senior projects.  Julie and Johanna gave great ideas and insight to all of our diverse integrative projects.  They had great advice about how I could improve the narrative of the sound story.  I found both of them to be very easy to talk to, and great discussions took place with everyone.  I left the two-hour session with great ideas about how to take my project even further.  Amanda listened to my sound piece today and agreed that I need to play with spacing Jay’s words out, to give the listener more time to absorb the information.  I am planning on meeting with Stephanie on Tuesday to go over the sound piece in more detail.

I enjoyed meeting with Megan, the writing tutor.  She had great insight about points to add in my paper.  She recommended I add my point of view on homelessness to the thesis.  She also advised I go into more specific detail about artists who have worked in this field. 

Since my overall goal is awareness, I have reached out to James Dickson of AnnArbor.com.  We spoke in early October about Camp Take Notice and he said to keep him updated about my project.  I am planning on meeting with him next week to show him the collaborative series and sound piece.

This week, Liz and I gave a presentation about IP to our “Home” studio class, since most of the students in the class are Juniors in A&D.  We gave them advice for entering IP, and one thing I recommended that everyone have, regardless if it is required or not, is a blog.  I love being able to blog about my process; when trying to connect with people for my project, many times I will say “check out my blog to read more”.  Having a blog helped to strengthen my writing skills.  It’s great practice for writing a quick reflection of my weekly progress.  

Tomorrow I am meeting with Ted... remember Ted?  He is the artist who carves beautiful, realistic images onto wood.  He is homeless and living in the tent community as well.  I am going to meet with him tomorrow at 2:30 in the AA District Library for an interview.  He couldn’t meet last week because he was volunteering at his church; he made chili for the homeless at the Delonis Center, even though he himself is homeless. 

This week I am going to work more on the “doorknobs” piece.  I am going to record highway sounds, since the tent community is less than 300 feet away from the I95 entrance ramp to the highway.  I am going to upload pieces to the blog as I go along.

I also want to create a sound piece about Jay's boots.  There is some really good sound material there, when he talks about how his boots have been the one constant material possession he has kept for the past 20 years:  "My boots have been there for me when I was young, and when I was old.  They were with me when I was rich........  and when I am poor."

I'll leave you with this last quote I found interesting from our interview.  I asked him what sounds he hears at night.  


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