WEEK 3: Initial creations

This week we began making our audio clip for Trixie.

Sybil and Samara had both written poems for Trixie, prior to me being in the class as I had an exam that morning. I read the poems and edited them to suite a greater narrative that we were creating for Trixie.

 Here is one of the completed poems

I want to visit that safe place in the unknown, reside in paradise, be in a euphoric zone.

Taken to a higher place at my own pace or when you’re ready in the arms of my saviour, saving me from drowning in bad behaviour, trying not to stay under.

I think I know where I’m going

I’ve been good enough to secure my place, behind Heaven’s gate.

Small hands, small feet, big minds, trying to find, information pawing at the books filled with holy words hands cheeky nerve. Your maternal nature keeping them from danger, kissing grazed-knees and tear-soaked cheeks.

Dominos to teach, 1,2,3 counting along merrily, tricks of the trade, tender tone we are not alone the lord is with us now, She tells the children stories from the good book, they sit crossed legged ready pleading and look, listening to her every loving word, she cares for them so much or so I have heard

three times on a Sunday you’re taught by god. Three times on a Sunday in church pew, three time on a Sunday listening to the good book, three times on a Sunday sitting silent, looking up to him, your heavenly kin, who one day you will see, and live with for eternity.

this was a combination of both Samara and Sybils poems that they felt were lacking in something. I feel this poem will be an effective part of our community arts project as it utilises information that Trixie has shared with us, but is also sentimental. The edits I made were to add repetition so "three times on a sunday" this was because of two main reasons, 1, Trixie often repeats her upbringing and how frequently she had to visit the church, and 2, Will mentioned the effectiveness of repetition to show the importance of something. I think this was indeed a good idea and will add to the project as a whole.

A problem we faced this week though is after recording the poems and selecting the appropriate music for transtioning between clips, our editing facilities were limited and our audio file would not save properly. The main issue with the audio editing facilities was it was hard to manipulate the different clips we were piecing together, so for music to transition into poems it wasnt as smooth as it could have been. We received feedback from Will in the end of lesson sharing that highlighted the look of smoothness in audio transitions. I will rectify that. The other issue of the file not saving meant that we would not be able to edit the file from where I left of, next week. This was a negative to our creative process

WEEK 2: Meeting Trixie/ Initial Ideas

This week was the week we had to have some sort of idea on what we were doing for the next 4 weeks with this project. After receiving the voice notes from Sybil and Samara we began transcribing the words we shared with Trixie, I was still to meet  her.
After meeting Trixie later that Tuesday I began to reconsider the legitimacy of my original idea to make a 50 first dates-esque viideo.

The idea of compiling together a film of all the places Trixie had been became clearly quite difficult, the majority of these areas were too far away from where we were all situated. She talked of Wales "pontypridd" and the Cotswold's, Broadway Tower. And gathering visual recorded data for these sites that now look a lot different to when Trixie visited them years ago seemed sort of pointless because they may have changed drastically to the way she remembers them.
for example in Pontypridd, Trixie married in around 1950/55 so her  and her husband (who was welsh) would've visited the famous  Taff Vale shopping centre (built in 1960)
1960s SHOPPING CENTRE

2016 Shopping centre

its clear the shopping centre has undergone many changes since Trixie would have been there, and plans to begin construction work on the site were at hand, so the place would not look the same.

Assessing the effectiveness of the idea we saw the cons weighed out the pros, in that getting the correct images would be too time consuming or going up to the sites to costly for our pockets. So in a compromise we decided upon creating a picture book of the places Trixie visited made of pictures from the time that she may have visited them, to accompany some sort of audio experience describing the places using our own words and those of hers that we had recorded, so it would still incorporate some of Trixie eternally, and us as well for her.

week 1

Tuesday
The First meeting of our community groups. I was not in attendance as I had food poisoning that day. So after being lightly briefed by Samara and Sybil, I found out who we were working with and that she had Alzheimer's. I began to research the disease and found an extremely interesting documentary on BBC. http://bbc.in/1NS9YPX The relationships the people had on the documentary with their loved ones was interesting and inspiring for our work with Trixie.


I also watched 50 First Dates,
The ending video in the movie, that Adam Sandler makes for his wife was in my opinion a really good idea to use for our person, We could discuss things with her from her past and compile them into a visual and audio experience that would stimulate her memory or possibly just act as  form of entertainment with familiar images and sounds.

 Samara and Sybil had recorded their first meeting with Trixie and informed me that her condition wasnt as bad as some in the home, and that her conversation skills and personality were a highlight of their visit. I listened to the majority of the clips to help me brain storm ideas to present to the group.