Documentation: Constant Surprises
I am horrible at keeping up with myself, especially my school work. Once I am done with a project I am ready to move on to the next. I don’t really care about promoting the work I do. Why? I don’t know. I just want to get it out of my system, almost like an exorcism. I feel really vain and gross when I have to talk about my work or myself. I absolutely hate doing it. I think it’s all the Catholic brainwashing. I feel guilty talking up space. Writing is only slightly easier because I don’t have to listen to myself, and most people don’t have the attention span to read a ton of text. YAY! I usually hate everything I do, but this past semester, I walked away not hating the work I created, which is a decent feeling. What I should be pondering is why I didn’t hate my work, and the process by which I came to this miraculous outcome. It has now taken me 2 months to get to the point where I am willing to even think about what I have created.
Here is my LunchBox:
Materials| Fall 2010 | Professor Peter Menderson
What is the one thing I miss from childhood? I miss a lot of things, but I really miss my lunch boxes. I never in a million years thought I would be cutting up aluminum steel and cramping the heck out of my hands to create a lunchbox. I now have what looks like permanent bird droppings on my warmest winter puffy jacket from spray painting my lunchbox out in the freezing morning cold behind the Tisch building. Good God, talk about suffering for your art. I think my hands almost fell off. Wah wah wah wah.
This project was my come to Jesus project. I really had to have a ton of patience, which I never seem to reserve enough of for myself. I was the kid in kindergarten that couldn’t cut, paste, color, draw, or do anything that had required any remote amount of precision. I fell flat on my face, I was clumsy, and confused most of the time. Well, I never grew out of it. Why I decided to torture myself with a class like materials is quite the mystery, but I am so thankful I did. Without a teacher like Professor Menderson, I would not have been exposed to many of the tools and techniques that have now expanded my artistic literacy.
Here I was pounding away, bending and prodding, prying and hurting the heck out of my hands, feeling like a total dunce for over 24 hours straight on top of several weeks worth of work. I really wanted to quit. I was going to accept that I still have no material talent, and was probably never going to produce anything tangible in this lifetime that I actually liked. I was going to look like a chump in front of my classmates. I would have to stare into my favorite teachers eyes and humbly accept my stupidity. I couldn’t go out like that! I stayed overnight and continued to work on it. I made a new friend named Jason, and he was there to watch some serious magic unfold. There are some people on the planet that are put in your place at the right time. Jason Stephens and Sandra Bernhardt were those people on that evening/morning.
“Some call it coincidence, but I’d like to call it fate.”
Here is my SoundFit:
Personal Expression in Wearable Technology | Fall 2010 | Professor Despina Papadopoulos
I created this project from a place of desire and need. I needed to feel like I was secure in my body and what my body can create. I am a vocalist. Unlike other instrumentalists, I use my body to create. I am a performer who puts herself in front an audience. I am probably the most loud shy person you might ever come in contact with. I am so shy that I have forced myself to learn how to be outgoing. Yay for coping skills. I would rather hide, but unfortunately, my art will not let me. ;-/ Certain implications and ideas surrounding what I do are prevalent in the expectations of who I am as a vocalist. I don’t do well with expectations. I am unrealistic, contradicting, and nonconforming, and boy does it get me in trouble. I am at a point now where I refuse to apologize for it any longer. This is where I am at. You will either love me or you wont.
The questions I asked of myself were extensive. How do I do that? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why am I doing this? So many times I felt completely lost. I love my ideas. I hate my execution. I hate my ideas. I love my execution. I don’t have the tools. I have too many tools. I don’t have the knowledge. I am overwhelmed with knowledge. There is so much that I DO NOT KNOW! There is never enough time. So many insecurities + so many faults… Can I even do this? I nearly drove myself mad.
What do cats do when they are scared? They fluff it up. What do musicians do to mask their insecurity? Amplify. (Joke! Yeah, I’m not that funny either.) So I looked at nature to solve my dilemma. When in doubt, nature always has a solution. Human nature: Ego. What would a super hero do? What would the super me do if I was super, super? Well, I have always wanted to create a completely vocal album of sounds based off of my voice. How can I make that into a wearable?
Honestly, I am just glad the darn thing worked. I spent way too many nights loosing sleep obsessing over this project, but at least I realized that I have follow through, and I won’t give up. There were times when I wanted to throw the inner workings of my SoundFit clear across the room. I am proud of myself that I did no such thing. I am even more proud that I was able to ask for help from people who loved me enough to help me. KRYSTAL BANZON IS MY HERO FOR LIFE!!!!
I think I didn’t hate my work for once, because I created functioning tangible pieces that meant something to me. They were also finished by the time I presented them, which is always a good thing. I would rather skip class and fail entirely before I present some half-ass piece of junk in front of my peers. Of course I can coast through, but really, who wants to do that? I am not here to create mediocre work. I’m not saying my work is good, I can’t be the person to judge that (catholic guilt + self-denial). I am just saying I gave it all I had.
So far, I haven’t had to skip class, except for the assignment where had to I type my name into different fonts. I don’t want look at my name that big on the projector screen in class. Too bad I didn’t have my band at the time. I would have gone to town on that assignment if I had. Sorry Professor Dillon. I loved everything else you taught, and I am still upset that I didn’t get you for my thesis advisor.
I haven’t really hated anything I have worked on here at ITP. All of the Physical Computing projects were absolutely awesome to learn how to create. I love P-Comp. All of the nerd in me gets to come out and play. I’m no programmer, but I was able to make all of my assignments at least work. I loved creating videos. Final Cut Pro is my best friend. I even have a soft spot in my heart for After Effects which I thought was the devil when I first started to work with it. Maxima Lux is more than a stick figure. That girl’s got heart. She has a full length story board with her name on it and a feature film when I have some more time in my day.
I have worked with some really cool people who have shared in making really great ideas come into fruition. I had to know that I could do it on my own. There was no hiding behind my team, my classmates, or my band. The responsibility was all mine, so if it went down south, then I would be the poster girl for failure.
I am not the most technical person. Before this program I didn’t even know what a soldering iron was. The fact that I can read a schematic and pull apart instruments and what most people would designate as junk to see how things work is a HUGE step for me. I was always super careful not to break things or mess things up. Now I am allowed to break everything, and I love it.
ITP has really taught me how to fail. I am 100% a perfectionist. It’s good for some things but it gets in the way of my growth in a lot of areas. I’ve had to step back and allow myself to be placed in positions where I am going to potentially fall flat on my face, fail hardcore, and look really dumb in front of the smartest people I know. That is not so easy for me to do, but I have forced myself to ask really hard questions. Somebody always has the answer and if they don’t, they know someone who does.
I was supposed to do my Thesis this Spring and I decided that I needed an extra semester to work on my final project. I have so many ideas racing through my head and I am trying to find a way to make it happen. I know that I want to involve sound, video, sculpture, and an immersive environment. I have learned to trust my gut. When I left Music Tech to come over to ITP, I was terrified and uncertain if I had made the right decision. I was half way through a master’s degree, and I quit to pursue another entirely different degree. Who does that? Nobody drops out that far into the game. If that wasn’t the most expensive and off the wall decision I have ever made, I don’t know what is. I am not a trust fund baby, so that may come back to bite me in the end; however, I believed that my education was the most important gift I could ever give myself. I now can say that I absolutely made the right decision. I may never own a piece of property. I may never afford to get married or have kids, but no one can take away the knowledge in my head. That’s all I really need in this life: To have the ability to learn and create.
Key things I learned:
1.) Let the material tell you what it needs to best function.
2.) Always trust your gut: No one can tell you who you are or where you need to go.
3.) Risks: Take the big ones baby!
4.) Fail and Fail and Fail… hopefully you’ll get it right by the time you have to present.
5.) Stay curious… Thank God the journalist in me is still asking a billion questions. The answer is always no unless you ask.
6.) Patience… It will come together when it is time to so don’t give up Bugg.
7.) Love: At the end of the day, if you suck at everything you do and nobody will help you, you are still mega loved and lucky to be alive with the privilege to still be learning. DON’T FREAK OUT!!!! Make some friends and surround yourself with people who are nice and smarter than you.
Thank you to all the people who helped make these projects happen. Even though I was working on them outside of a group, I couldn’t have done anything without the help of my teachers, colleagues and dear friends.
And finally, here is my 1st real website:
Visual Communication | Fall 2010 | Professor Kathryn Dillon
Lisa Maria's ITP Blog 