Situational Tour: The Good Old Days.

Pulling Up. Stopped. Vast emptiness.
Searching for fragments of my past.
I miss naivety.
Decades later, much is the same.
But not that slide. Where is my slide?

Signs excluding us.
The grown-ups.
Is that me? Am I trespassing?
This was once all mine.
Here, where we played wall-ball.
That's MY wall, MY sign.

I can name all 50 states in alphabetical order.
Used to jump on Alaska.
Wish it was that easy. To hop from one place to the next.
I'm stuck.
Bouncing between two homes, going nowhere.

Still looking up. Haven't grown much.
It was so hard to use this basket.
To be part of the game.
THEN to score a point.
At least I control my own success now, not the 6th graders.

The rainbow.
'Cause that's what it looks like.
Here before my time, and now after.
The only play thing of MINE that is left.
Plain, cold metal. Blisters. Bruises.
The way it's s'posed to be.
Just up now, and down later.

Now it's only up. Or "success" is lost.

This is new.
Sure, it's pretty, but it's too easy.
Plastic, steps, smooth surfaces.
Where is the BIG slide? Where Tyler broke his arm.
Kids sure have it easy these days.

Time stops.
I jumped. I was so high.
I was flying.
OW!
My hand, blood.
Great. Another trip to the nurse.
Swings are the best.
I got hurt a lot. But nothing bothered ME.
Easy. Multiplication, snack time, kickball.
Not anymore. Research, running, wasted nights.
I'd rather play kickball.

Tweeeet.
Line up kids. Take roll. You must be here.
What happens if I'm not?
Nothing.
Now, don't need to be here. But if not: Failure.
Funny how that works.

Ding!
The worst sound ever.
Recess is over.
Move on kids, it's another grade's turn to play.
I want to play. I don't want to leave.
Let me play.

The trailers.
My home for four years.
Freeze your tail off if you have to pee.
Bring a buddy. Outside is dangerous.
I think outside is beautiful.
Inside. Chaos.
Josh threw a chair. Ryan puked. We had a meeting about David.
"Be nice kids." No way!
He called me a name. I called HIM a weirdo.
It's true.
Later, I found out he had issues at home.
I should learn to keep my mouth shut.
I still hate the kid.

Some things never change.

I have to get out. I don't belong in this empty school.
There should be smiles and basketballs and Berenstein Bear books.
Driving by in my car.
Damn, people that drive are ginormous, I used to think.
The baseball field. The blue sky.
Can't remember much.
All I think about in this space is my job.
It's only a few yards away from this field.
We used to sing there. Walk over. Make the old people happy.
Did it 'cause they made me.
Now I serve them liver and onions.
I drive. I do it for the money. I do it because I like it.
I guess I'm still making their day.

I zoom by faster.
I want to go back.
SO bad.
They don't want me.
I know I can't anyway.
I used to get hurt so much. Cuts, scrapes, pencil wounds.
That doesn't happen anymore.
It's a different pain.
My mind is cluttered.
It's not even about the recess or easy classes.
I just want to swing for a while to clear my head.

What determines a total multimedia experience?

According to F.T. Marinetti, film is an encompassing art form. John Cage believed that a total artistic experience involves the audience to a large extent. I don't believe that to have an all-encompassing effect on a human mind that every single sense must be triggered and all art forms need be involved. Obviously the more types of media involved, the more a piece of work will effect different aspects of the brain. But more is not always better. I believe that even without technology a great multimedia experience can be obtained, like the old days where they had live music and theater instead of audio tracks and computer graphics. Sometimes just two forms of media can have a much stronger effect on the viewer than all of them. It is through different combinations of mediums that artists will tap into new ideas and evoke different emotions from the audience.

Rolling Hills Elementary School

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This is my elementary school. I absolutely loved it there...the best days of my life by far. It was definitely a place where authority ruled. Bigger kids rule the little kids, teachers rule all the kids, and the administration is an authority on all. Nowadays, with all the crazy people running around elementary schools have no choice but to be secure. Even if I go in, as a young woman to visit an old teacher, they stop me at the front desk and accost me. There are signs everywhere saying not to trespass. This elementary school has a definite ritual to it as well. In the morning you line up behind the number on the blacktop that your class has been assigned to. Roll is taken there. There are bells and scheduled lunch and recess times for the different grades; every day becomes routine. And the ideology they preached there, of following the golden rule and acting kindly to others was constant. There was a lot of stuff going on back then that I didn't notice. I was just there to play on the swings and learn the multiplication tables.

Does the birth of a new medium translate into an ultimate death for another?

With the creation of the cassette tape, vinyl records and their players slowly died as a popular product. The same thing happened to tapes with the birth of CDs, VHS with the invention of the DVD, and eventually the DVD may disappear and movies will be purchased only on a computer. The computer is a medium that enables almost anything to be accomplished: from sending mail and reading books to listening to music, watching movies, and even talking live to others. Yet, I still do not believe that with the progression of the Internet and personal computers that books, snail mail, telephones, or even old records will disappear completely. The fact that the computer does so much almost makes you want to get away from it to send an actual letter or curl up in a chair and read a book. Alan Kay thought 36 years ago that the computer would replace books, and it has not even come close. Old products have a way of coming back and certain mediums will never disappear. While the computer can do almost everything necessary to survive in the modern day, I think people will prevent the computer from replacing all other products.

Can we compare the computer to a paintbrush?

With so many programs now that have tools to create and edit works of art, it cannot be denied that the computer is a medium for artwork. Yet many of the programs have templates, filters, and other such things created by other artists that we use to enhance our own artwork. In that sense, I do not believe that a computer is a true, simplistic medium of art with only the one artist's creativity in mind. Instead, the computer is a medium that encourages sharing of ideas and expansion of a simple piece of artwork into a more complex one that has the opportunity to affect the senses in a different way.

ARTIST'S PERSPECTIVE: MULTIMEDIA SPRING 2008