In this project I wanted to take my content a little slow. This is in part to relay my dire feelings about the solitude of life which I believe is carried in the romantic composition and solid visuals of the piece. The visuals also move, to show my travel representationally physical as well as temporally (they’re in chronological order). The faded and ill defined visuals are an allusion to memory, of which I am currently making in my life as a university student. As I’ve gotten older I’ve been able to see my choices more clearly, and this style choice is to focus on my new appreciation for the moment in time and space I inhabit.

 

The narrative of the piece is the blending together of my trip to UIC twice a week. During this trip I attend school all day. The video follows the morning perceptions that I usually cut out of my mind or don’t focus on as I try to navigate what I must to get to class. The video also represents the blurred memory of my travels to school seeing that I don’t pay attention to the travel much anymore, but everything that comes after. My hope is that the video represents my waking up, my sleeping on the train, and my awareness coming to meet myself some hours after waking - when it is needed.

 

I use longform and edited audio to relay sleepiness and the atmospheric focus of my piece (it's all about my location in space). My audio is blasted to represent some pain I feel in my struggles - alike an unwelcome assault on my senses by the city and my needs from the world. I use visuals of plants to represent moments of calm existential entities in the early morning, and against the bureaucratic mission of life that I have assigned myself. The plants also communicate my hope that one day I can distance myself from conglomerations of technology, people, and business.

 

The piece also represents an increase in pressure, as I wake to the continuing realization that I must fight newer battles to secure my needs, my body, my mental health, my financial situation, my self-realization, and more. In this sense, with each new trip to the city my life becomes more chaotic in its history yet also relays a particular beauty and peace through this building up and relief in pressure of my life’s work. This is the battle of life, to take on new problems, to solve them, and then to face the problems that come next.

 

A pigeon walks in the water, just as a poster of the Grand Canyon hangs in the office. This piece seeks to put that idea together, to be a creature of civilization yet a bird that may fly. But to what good?