Trails is a performance/video project meant to compare and contrast technology and nature through journalism, journey, and memory. Trails was a two part piece taking place in nature and in a school setting capturing moments of movement and interaction with a sculpture referencing the aesthetics of "Ushbus." In the outdoor setting the sculpture contained food that could be consumed by wild animals and in the indoor setting the sculpture contained non-edible plastic phones and edible candy.
Inspiration
Over the summer I began to combine physical journal entrees, photographs I took daily, and art in Photoshop to try to form a healthy relationship with technology. This became an easy everyday habit because Photoshop is now available on phones and can be accessible at any time. Self-control was also a theme I wanted to address in this piece because it is something I struggle with daily and was pretty successful, seeing the food from both parts of my piece were gone.
Process/Journey (Outdoor)
The documentation of the set-up of the piece became the most important key to making this successful. I walked over 30 miles while facing some pretty crazy obstacles carrying the sculpture like a torch. Through this journey I faced many memories of my years in college and memories of why I visited the trail. Some memories were sweet and some memories were quite sad. I documented these thoughts after finding the perfect place for my piece to stand. Setting up the cam was fairly easy and I sat and took a rest next to my installed piece. I got lost on the way out of the trail due to flooding and documented the whole experience speeding up the footage the more anxious I became. The carrying of the torch became a physical embodiment of carrying Ushbus, symbolizing the impossible escape of chronic illness and cyclical depression. I slipped and fell on a rock on my way to set the piece up, and fell again on a cactus two days later while retrieving the piece. It became apparent that life will always get us down, but we will always get back up (sorry for the cheesy-line).
Process/Journey (Inside)
My experience with setting up the piece inside my college art building was a completely different experience. It was not sentimental and I did not feel any connection to this part of my piece which I find extremely amusing because it is how I feel about new technology. The art building in my college is brand new and actually unfinished in some areas, but I would still consider it as a "trail." I walk it four days out of the week and so do many other people. At this point my sculpture was no longer beautiful and clean, it was now muddy, deranged, and to some very unapproachable. This is how I am feeling currently with the end of my undergraduate studies. I filled the sculpture with candy and very tiny 3D printed iPhone's. I set the sculpture up in an area that I knew many people would walk by and also sit while also having an appropriate place to set up my trail cam. I set the trail cam up to where it would only catch the lower half of peoples bodies as they reach into the sculpture for candy. This worked wonderfully and I was quite surprised that the staff and art students had eaten all of my candy leaving behind the tiny iPhone's.
Set-up for Presentation/Documentation
Originally for presentation I wanted to project the stills that I caught with the trail cam, instead I decided to physically go get them developed and put them in the sculpture. I then replaced the pictures with the video documentation showing the journey of this piece. I did not take video documentation of the set-up of the piece in my school. So the part of the piece I associated with nature and physical aspects became digital and the indoor part of the piece that I associated with digital and virtual aspects became physical. The site of the piece was no longer what it had intended to be and became journalistic and mental.
