Music for Final Performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_doAV8bx0xg

Presentation for Tuesday

My presentation for Tuesday will be on my life changing experience of when I was 3 years old and I saw my father get his first and only DUI, getting taken out of our truck, and getting cuffs put on him, and getting taken away while leaving my mother and my siblings who were 10 months old and 9 years old while I was 3. I feel like this presentation should be very personal and this is my most personal experience since I was born. I feel like people in general need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and with everything that had happened, i feel like my life and the life that we were leading changed for the better. Up until this event, my life was full of a "machismo" with my father having the majority of the saying in the family. and when this happened, my mother shook herself out of her comfort zone, and finally took the first step to take us out of where we were at, and take us onto better things. Before this, we were alright, we had everything we needed, but we weren't getting ahead. I feel like my family and I wouldn't be where we are at now. My brother and I certainly wouldn't have gone to college and I don't feel like my sister would be the strong independent woman she is now. This dramatic example shook all of us out of apathy and now, we are all better off.

Final Performance Concept

Abby Armstrong

Final Presentation Proposal

For my final presentation, the experience I would like to recreate is when I hospitalized due to a severe illness last year and left school. I know it’s a sad, dismal topic. However, it is an experience that provided me new insight and helped me see the bigger picture of what I came to college for.

I want the audience to feel what I felt: the helplessness, denial, boredom, sleeping for weeks, etc. I want them to visualize the monitors, the white walls of the hospital, constant beeping of machines. To engage these senses, I could play the sound of the hospital machines in the background, lightly while giving my presentation. I want to emphasize the boredom that I felt. This is because while all of my friends were at school, I was bedridden. However, I am not quite sure how I would do this. Although, I was severely ill, my mind was moving at one hundred miles per hour. Thinking about every class I missed, every assignment I wasn’t completing, every joke I wouldn’t be part of, etc. Therefore, I thought it may be beneficial to do a cut n’ mix. I could combine content from my blood tests, doctors’ notes, my emotions and my daily activities.  This would then represent my jumbled thoughts. The painkillers that I was on almost daily heightened my feelings and made me feel low rather than high. Therefore I want to convey that in my presentation some how. For almost three weeks I couldn’t talk normally due to infection of my throat, however, me not talking in this performance wouldn’t be all that effective because I feel like I wouldn’t be able to provide my perspective in a efficient manner.

These all have the potential to be effective in my opinion, however, it is the matter of the fact of what is the most effective. I really want the audience to feel the way I did.

Final of Lee ①

         My first year at American is a nightmare, it's the worst time in my whole life. The language problem, the culture shock, and especially the food suffered me a lot. I have been America for almost two years. However, it's just the third quarter I've studied in the Universities, even though I took a Summer quarter t this year. I wasn't sick or had finance problem. The reason that I didn't attend that much quarters in university is that I've been to the ELC. ELC is a place that DU established to help international students to improve their English. At first, I did get into the university. However, I wasn't a hard worker at that time. I was busy to play video games, read novels, and play with my friends. I believe my English may be not that good at that time, but it is not that bad to catch one F and two Ds in the first quarter. The university sent me a letter to tell me that I had to go to ELC to improve my English. I've been a really hard time at that time. I am afraid to tell the truth to my parents. I don’t disappoint them. And I strongly believed if I got a chance I can do better. I kept that thought when I went to the ELC. I despised the ELC until I finished my first quarter. All my friends were in university, and we used to mock the students who waste their life in the ELC when I was in University. Some students of ELC, their purpose is not really to learn. Their parents own a company, their got money; they came here to enjoy American life. To have a good car, a better coat, and even a fantastic house. They don’t care about the score they got. However, when I became a student in ELC, I feels different. It’s not a shame to know who you really are, it’s shame that you know who you are but you don’t want to accept and change. After passing the first quarter, I realized that ELC it’s not that easy for me. Learning something is not wasting your life, is improving it. Then i spent four quarters to get out the ELC. I think this is important to me, because it changes me a lot. I grew me up a lot after that. It's a great experience for me. 

final performance

For my final performance I will recreate when I got to play in a grand piano concert in 8^th. This is significant to me because I had been playing the piano for 7 years at that point and this was my last year of taking lessons. My teacher gave me the opportunity to be part of the grand concert. I was excited and nervous at the same time. This would mean many hours of practicing and rehearsal. It would be a lot of pressure. Part of the grand’s concert is there are 12 grand pianos on stage and 2 people playing at each piano. Everyone plays the same song but there are 2 parts so it can get very confusing to stay on beat and not mess up.  I want the audience to experience how many hours I spent sitting at the piano practicing learning the new piece and trying to memorize it. Becoming frustrated when I could not play part of the piece right and wanting to give up. I will do this by making a cut n mix piece to read to the class and I might have parts of the piece playing over and over in the background to show how many times I had to practice the same section over and over. I then want to show the excitement of the day of the concert and being nervous right before going on stage. I will end the performance with playing the whole piece at the end and feeling accomplished once I was done playing. I will also pass around the music of the piece I played to let the audience see the music. The senses this will incorporate are seeing the piece of music and I might show a picture of what the stage looks like with the 12 pianos set up on it. Also hearing the cut n mix and the sound of the pianos playing and then the audience will pass around the music. 

            When looking into what has shaped my belief system and truths, a stand out moment for me was finding out my Uncle was gay after his death. Both my mother’s brother and my mother’s Parents knew the fact that my Uncle was gay. Finding this out was difficult because it kept him from becoming close with my mother, Father, and sisters. It was his belief that he would have been disowned from my mom if he had told her his sexual orientation.

            This shaped me because it not only caused deep sadness for my family, it also showed me that openness and respect are vital for any healthy relationship. I never got to know my uncle and he never got to know me. His untimely and unexpected death forced me to look at my relationship with my sisters, and ultimately led to my belief that sexual orientation, sexuality, mental, and physical health should be discussed, understood, and respected.

            The senses in which I hope to engage are all of them, I am finding it difficult currently, to find definitive and logical options to have my audience feel loss and then understanding, while also putting into play the roles that the ‘taboo’ topic of sexual orientation, sexuality, and mental health have had on me specifically. Possibly in mixing the senses into one object I can create confusion, and in making this object one of a sexual nature (sex toy or something…) I can incorporate the taboo of the implications of being gay did to my family. Also, bringing a sex toy to class will be uncomfortable for everyone making this object a representation of how my uncle felt. However, I don’t feel like this encompasses the entirety of the emotional response I had to this event. 

On a daily basis I go on Reddit, I've found it as a great un-biased news and entertainment source. The other day an article caught my eye. The link was titled, "Most of us don't know what "net neutrality" is, but we'll be sorry when we lose it". 

I certainly didn't know what "net neutrality" was, but after reading the article I feel I have my topic for my final presentation. Net neutrality is the concept or idea that the internet is a place where people are free to express themselves, they don't need anyones permission to create, invent, communicate, broadcast or share anything. I have already spoken about how browsers and search engines can affect our internet freedom, but this article brought up an even scarier reality.

Yes google selects which websites you see first when you search, but you have the power to use a different search engine if you are bothered by google's results. However, companies like Verizon, At&t have access to actual physical parts of the internet, and they are pushing for an end to net neutrality so they can make money off of "net partiality". 

Think of it this way, what if a large supermarket were allowed to buy roads and highways, and thereafter highly toll competitor's trucks or simply ban them all together so that there was no competition at the grocery stores accessible by those roads/highways? That is what these companies are pushing to do to the intricate system of the web.