The Process Piece


Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought:
"Man! I wish I had a nice, cold bowl of cereal right now. But alas, it is too difficult a process and I have never learned the art."

Yeah. You probably haven't. (and you probably have never changed into an olden time British accent in the middle of that thought either)

But in case you were wanting to learn, heres an audio process piece explaining it:


https://soundcloud.com/rissa6/cereal


Enjoy!

Artist Statement:

This audio piece is a sarcastic narrative depicting exaggerated event of getting a bowl of cereal for breakfast in the morning. Drawing from the process piece videos we viewed both in and out of class we chose to record an everyday occurrence that most people do not stop and take the time to think about how it sounds. After observing carefully the various everyday noises that we encounter we discovered the rich audio that comes from prepping, eating, and finishing a bowl of cereal. Our first trial of recording our audio was strictly noise only with no narrative, which provided some serious concentration to make out what exactly was going on. After sharing our piece with another group and them sharing theirs with us we realized that this piece could be so much clearer and edifying with a narrative added to it. Our goal is to wake people up to their own senses, especially in the mornings. Normally when people get up and eat cereal they are still pretty sleepy and for the most part unobservant. So we agreed to awaken people to the beauty and fun in our early morning routines and to notice all the little details involved in the sounds you make while eating breakfast. Even the mundane everyday tasks in our lives that we sometimes do only for the sake of doing them, or in this case for survival, since food is a necessity, can be entertaining and fun when you pause to appreciate what your making, not just for your stomach to consume, but you ears as well. This piece of work is not intended so much to be educational or philosophical as it is to be fun and humorous. We created this with the well-known philosophy in mind, which is, that you cannot appreciate what you do not know is there.

One-man Band

            John stood alone on stage.  Looking out on the audience, he started to rethink his choice on firing the other members.

Graduate Student

            As Walt left the testing center, the smile on his face from his final test faded.  He looked at his new book list, welcoming Law School.

Fine Mess

            Timmy looked over work with a satisfied gaze.  After an hour of work on his room, everything was placed exactly where he wanted it: out in the open.

All Alone

            James looked down the street noticing the strangers who looked on without a word.  He walked among the sea of people.  All of them, alone.

Good Grief

            Although it hurt, Jenny was happy for her grief.  The crying washed out her eyes, so that she might see her world more clearly.

Artist Statement:

Each one of my tiny stories is based off of commonly used oxymorons.  Most of these phrases are used without really thinking about what they meant if they were taken literally.  They are more of second nature to us because we have heard them all of our lives growing up.  But I thought it could be fun to take what we say and make it into a literal story.  My stories started off funny, but the more I got into the oxymorons the deeper my stories started to become.

Some of my inspiration came from the stories from the author Shel Silverstein.  A lot of my favorite stories from my childhood came from his books.  In just a few words (and in a rhyming matter) Silverstein tells a whole story and even leaves a lot for the reader to infer about the past, present, and future.  He gives them room to decide what life was like before and after the small story but also gives them direction as to where to go with that story.  This is what I tried to do with my tiny stories as well.  I gave enough detail to tell the short part of their life, but tried to give direction for the readers to create their on story as well.

The reading talks about the little things in our lives and how often we miss them.  There are many little things in our own lives that we miss, and sometimes they can be the greatest details.  Whether it is the details that we put in our stories to make them so real, or the details that can give us inspiration for our stories.  The tiniest things that we might not see can create great stories.  And when your stories can only be 30 words or less, one little detail can help create a full story when you have a limit to what you can say.

(music link: LINK)

Can I Come With?

Artist's Statement

Stories are reflections.  They are reflections of our pasts, our beliefs, our lives.  Stories can teach us lessons or prove points. This Music Mosaic illustrates the story of playing with the how people emotionally view relationships.  The girl in the story longs for her husband to stay with her.  She wants him to not leave, to stop putting work and the world and those secular things before her.  Because even though he is not doing anything unreasonably wrong (he is not cheating on her or abusing her, in fact he is going off to a job to provide for her), he is still not showing as much love towards his marriage as he is towards something that the world holds at high esteem: his job and his income.  It has gotten to the point in their relationship that the man’s view of his relationship with his wife has become nothing more than that of a man and his dog.  He knows she will be waiting and forgiving, and without meaning to, he has turned her into no more than a canine companion.  Values and emotions are soft, and the world demands us to be hard.

            One element of the most recent reading for this class that really stood out to me is the mention of how stories or values or religions are not held in very high regard anymore because of how they have come to be perceived.  They are soft; we must be hard.  We are afraid to speak up for what we stand for and think that if it can not be proven, then it holds no place in our world. 

            However, while the world puts emphasis on the hardness of the world, there are still those things that would fight against it.  Some would argue that we are asked to be strong, and love is the strongest force we have.  There are even modern stories that illustrate this fact.  Take Ron and Hermione from the Harry Potter series: while the world may argue that emotions are weak, they prove that with their love they can accomplish great things.  Their relationship, unlike the one in the pictures, is double sided.  They both need each other, but neither is a waiting dog.  They feed off of each other and are better people because of it.  Unlike the view from the passage, their love and values do not make them soft, but strong.