I have a new draft of Roots & Remains, though I don't have the same conviction about this piece being complete as I do with Isaiah's Inventory. I feel that for now it is in a good place. Originally, I intended for this to be an audio piece but I believe that it becomes stronger by combining the image of a landscape near the cemetery where I found Great-Uncle Flemming with an image of the bill of sale showing that Isaiah Jr. purchased Charity Ann and her children with Flemming's signature on it. I will use the same photo installation as Isaiah's Inventory.
Finally, I'm at a point where I feel this piece is complete. I remixed the sound, leaving more space between the reading of the names so that more of the object/animal list is discernible as I mentioned with the last draft. The sound also builds more slowly in intensity, which I believe is more effective at creating an emotional connection with the viewer. I also altered the image so that the list fills the entire frame which I also believe makes more of an emotional impact, however comparing the two images, I think including the edge of the book is visually stronger. I will have to think more about whether or not to change the image back to its original cropping. Finally, I tweaked the timing of the dissolve to compliment the timing of the narrative. I sighed with relief when exporting this last draft because for one of the very few times in my life, I knew without a doubt that the work was resolved and with the exception of deciding what to do about the image, I believe I achieved what I set out for. I've also been working on the installation. The video will be projected into the negative space of a photo collage containing images of the landscapes of Harris County, county maps, the probate documents I found in the Town Hall, and graves from the Sardis and Prospect AME Church cemeteries. This installation will also be used to project Roots & Remains.
Yesterday, I completed the 1st draft of a new audio piece. A question that I've struggled with this semester is how to incorporate my research and artistic process more into the finished work. In this piece, I wrote narrative describing my trip to Harris County in search of my ancestral home, Negro Heel, and Isaiah Parker Jr.'s grave. I combined it with a nature recording of my childhood home and recitation of and repeated excerpts from Alice Walker's poem, Turning Madness into Flowers. I'm currently exploring ideas for turning the piece into a video installation and will discuss this further as it develops.
I have a new draft of Isaiah's Inventory. I was very unsatisfied with the quality of sound in the original draft, so I re-recorded everything. I also considered tone more with the mixing of this work. My intention is to create a sense of confusion and complexity. My mentor, Cathy, suggested being more thoughtful about the sculptural qualities of sound. Taking her advice, I experimented more with the use of stereo to create sound that is more dimensional and experiential. I'm currently working on the installation for this work. Although I intentionally overlapped the tracks containing the lists of animals and inanimate objects, I also tried to space out the narration of the names so that the viewer/listener can catch snippets of the contrasting list. In between the names of people and their valuation, one can here things like bay horse mule, or meat, or buggy. I'm not quite convinced that enough of the animal/object list is discernible, making the contrast clear between it and the list of peoples names. Finally, I added more contextual details in the document's narration, in an attempt to aid in the listener's understanding of the work.
Already this semester has been a major turning point for my work. In addition to returning to the familiar medium of photography, I also plan to continue working with the more recent narration practice and to incorporate a completely new element; using sounds collected from various sources. For the past couple of weeks, I've been collecting ambient sounds from specific places at various times of the day. I document the name of the place, as well as the date and time the recordings were made. I've also recorded interviews with my mother and grandmother. I consider these sounds, like the photographs I've been taking, raw material to work with once I return home. Click video below to hear a recording sample of my grandmother's backyard on August 17, at 7:49 pm.
Here is a brief list of goals and ideas in regards to sound and narrative elements in my work:
Research technical
aspects of ambient and viewer initiated sound.
Rosemarie
Trockle and Lynda Benglis
Continue writing, keep a
commonplace book and daily reflectionnaire.
Think about
looping/overlapping narratives vs. voice/movement activated narration
(presented as chapters).
Continue to record
writings and experiment with different methods of storytelling.
Record interviews with
family (perhaps people I meet during trip to Harris County).
Do a lot reading, like, a
lot. Academic/non-fiction and lift my self-initiated ban on fiction that I started at the beginning of the program.
