Category: Creative Works

The Body Talks

Presenter: Alyssa Puleo

Co-Presenter: Stephanie Ennes, Eleanor Christenson, Ferena Kagata

Mentors: Walter Kennedy and Brad Garner, Dance Department

Creative Work Presentation: C10 (EMU Ballroom Main Stage)

Major: Dance

In my experience as a dance major at the University of Oregon, I have noticed that dancers are completely integrated from daily dance classes, and have a wide range of movement vocabulary to support their audible statements in a conversation. A dancer’s body recognizes the feelings behind the statements being made, and adds to their point of view, by visually displaying their emotional reaction to the moment. I believe dance could be considered its own expressive language, because every formal language has a defined and limited vocabulary, but personal movement expressions do not. I hosted an improvisational dance therapy session over the span of two days. My dancers, Eleanor Christenson, Stephanie Ennes, and Ferena Kagata, were asked to remember a time and feeling in their life that they did not know how to directly put into words. The movement was rich and lived, with a lot of happenstance parallels between all three dancers. Their feedback was most interesting. They felt relieved after the process had come to a conclusion, almost as if they had released the emotional response out of their expression system, but didn’t have to use a codified language. I was thrilled with this, because I believe those who are terrified of talking to people about their anxiety or depression, can engage in an activity like this, and perhaps gain some comfort and relief from the pressure to keep it bottled up. Often times, people allow this to happen because they don’t feel comfortable allowing their bodies to live loose. Children are animated beyond belief in their movement, because it is socially acceptable to be expressive as a child. The older people become, the more rigid they are in their ability to express themselves through movement. I understand also that everyone is different, and not everyone expresses feelings through body animation. My goal in this study was to host a safe space for these people to observe new ways of moving by tapping into a different sensations and intentions to dance. In diving into the experience, they received feedback from their body about areas of tension and held traumatic experiences. Memories were revisited after years of neglect, and a cognitive shift occurred after the emotions were released from the subjects’ bodies. We created choreographed two group phrases but will be improvising in two other sections to save the sense of wonder and surprise that comes with tuning in to the human body.

Just Stories: Telling Stories with Communities

Presenter: Laura Nausieda

Co-Presenters: Alex Deck, Arica Sears, Lauren Rapp, Rowan Hardenbrook, Arielle Shamash, Emma Sloan, Hope Tejedas, and Marla Waters

Mentors: Kathryn Lynch and Aylie Baker, Environmental Studies

Creative Work Presentation: C11 (Gumwood Room)

Majors: Environmental Studies and Anthropology

Using video, audio and photography, the goal of the Environmental Leadership Program’s Just Stories Team is to collaborate with local partners to document communities responding to environmental injustice. Winter term we worked with community members in Cedar Valley, Oregon to create the film Drift: A Community Seeking Justice. In October 2013, a helicopter spraying herbicides over recent clearcuts dripped chemicals over local residents, several tributaries of the Rogue River and lands abutting the local school. Residents immediately began reporting negative health effects. The 20-minute film documents the aftermath of the aerial spray incident as well as the community’s efforts to organize locally and call for statewide community health protections. Drift was screened at the State Capitol in March as well as the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon. It aims to spread awareness about Senate Bill 613, which would require the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Department of Forestry to create spray buffer zones for homes, schools, drinking water and fish-bearing streams. Spring term, we are working with women who are leaders in their communities in responding to pesticide drift to learn about their visions of change. In addition to sharing some of these stories, we will talk about our process of community-centered media-making as a catalyst for meaningful change on environmental justice issues.

The No Outsiders Classroom Project

Presenter: Jessica Miller

Co-presenters: Kalynn Jaramillo, Rhue Buddendeck, Ana Osorio, Antonina Pevzner

Mentors: Julia Heffernan, Education Studies; Maure Smith-Benanti, LGBTESSP

Creative Work Presentation: C5 (Gumwood Room)

Major: Psychology

Queering the Teacher’s Desk: Education Studies 111 focuses on issues and problems in education. As a culminating critical pedagogy activity in the fall of 2014 every discussion section for this course decorated an old school desk to represent themes in public education. A single section of EDST 111 was filled entirely with LGBTQ students living in the UO Gender Inclusive Student Housing. This group maintained an academic focus on gender and sexuality studies in education. The LGBTQ cohort professor was the director of the master’s degrees and licensure program in teacher education. The cohort itself was designed as a disruption of heteronormativity in teacher education. Along with critical pedagogy readings the LGBTQ cohort was assigned the concept of reimagining the teacher desk. At the end of the term these students were given the actual “Teacher’s Desk” to paint in an act of reclaiming the classroom. Of particular importance to the project are the following statistics:

  • 74% of queer students are verbally harassed at school
  • 61% of queer students report school based harassment get no relief
  • Queer students are three times as likely to miss school on a monthly basis
  • Queer students have lower grade point averages than their peers
  • Queer students are twice as likely to not plan to pursue post-secondary educationThis work has been displayed at the College of Education.

Siem Reap Province of Cambodia

Presenter: Hannah Miller

Mentors: Peg Boulay, Environmental Studies; Marquis Blaine, Journalism

Creative Work Presentation: 46

Major: Journalism

During the fall of 2014, I spent three months interning with The Trailblazer Foundation, located in the Siem Reap province of Cambodia. The Trailblazer Foundation works to address sustainable living, create self-sustaining programs, foster community based development, provide opportunities for self-employment and economic independence, reduce dependency on international aid, and find additional solutions to alleviating poverty. The Trailblazer Foundation integrates local communities in their projects while facilitating conservation related practices, as well as outreaches to the global conservation community. While working with and living among the people of Cambodia, a country that impacted my life profoundly, I was able to photograph much of the Cambodian culture and ways of living.

Neuro

Presenter: Ana Lind

Mentor: Alison Ho, Digital Arts

Creative Work Presentation: 43

Major: Digital Arts

Animation is visual art in motion; it is a unique medium that can bring the most fantastical stories to life. I am an animator who is endlessly inspired by the beautiful inner workings of the brain, and I love to tell stories that celebrate human consciousness and connection. My film is about a young man who is desperate for validation. His desperation takes him on a surreal journey into the mind of the woman that he loves, where he comes face-to-face with the unrealistic expectations that he imposed on both her and himself. With my film I hope to challenge my fellow students to imagine each other more complexly.

A Ceramic Exploration of Simplistic Forms that Blend into Daily Life

Presenter: Amanda Kibbel

Mentor: Jessica Swanson, AAA Ceramics

Creative Work Presentation: C2 (Gumwood Room)

Major: Product Design

This ceramic exploration started with the parameters of tableware and developed from one of three unique form tests. The intention for the final set was to create tableware whose form and glaze was unobtrusive in the kitchen and could be used for most dining experiences. The work was inspired by Dieter Rams’s “10 Principles of ‘Good Design’” and an urge to create minimalistic pieces that did not lose their ability to relate to the user because of an unapproachable aesthetic. Each piece was created using of an electric potter’s wheel, with the handles of the pitchers and lidded

forms shaped by hand. The resulting product was a thick layer of white matte glaze to add to the roundness of each object along with rounded approachable forms and thin bare-clay handles that were sanded down to be soft to the touch. Possible future improvements include: a redesign of handles to be wider for more surface area between hand and handle; a taller foot on each piece of the set to give it a “floating” appearance to add to its harmony in the living space; and making the bowls and cups easier to stack on top of each other. The future of design lies in designing products that work in conjunction with our lives and stepping away from products that consume our attention.

We’re Not Just a Team; We’re Also a Community: UO Poetry Slam Team

Presenter: Hannah Golden

Co-presenters: Alex Dang, Sarah Hovet, Sarah Menard, Dante Douglas

Mentor: Corbett Upton, English

Creative Work Presentation: C4 (Maple Room)

Majors: Journalism and Spanish 

The UO Poetry Slam (UOPS) was founded by Hannah Golden and Alexander Dang to build a community and audience for poetry on campus that embodies the inclusiveness and excitement of slam poetry. Poetry and language belong to all of us, not just a select few, and by foregrounding the form’s communal aspects, slam challenges hierarchical notions of what forms and experiences constitute art, specifically when it comes to poetry, and seeks to make poetry accessible to, and inclusive of, all voices, experiences, subjectivities. In this presentation, we will explain the origins of slam poetry and show how the form is distinguished from traditional poetry readings in both its ethics and its format, most obviously by the fact that poets’ work is limited to a 3-minute original poem scored on a 10-point scale by five judges randomly selected from the audience, and will conclude with performances by each slam team member. Additionally, we will detail the team’s journey to competing at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI), the top competition for college slam poets. In fall 2014, we held auditions, attracting a wide range of students, who competed in six bouts. After the dust settled, we had our team. Some of us had never performed or even written poetry before these tryouts. Throughout the process of recruiting and building a team that can be competitive anywhere in the state, we have held to our ideal of an inclusive, democratic community with an insistence on high-quality work and an atmosphere of mutual encouragement. We began the slam community here at UO to create a forum where all can express themselves – anyone can be a poet, and anyone can appreciate poetry. We are excited to show you our work now.

Project Bamboo

Presenter: Alex Caves

Mentors: Jessica Swanson and Trygve Faste, Product Design

Creative Work Presentation: 10

Major: Product Design

What is a natural material that has a comparable tensile strength to steel, can be used as a primary structure for a multi-story building, has antimicrobial properties, and is the most sustainable material to harvest? Bamboo. Most
of us know bamboo as a privacy hedge for your garden, but bamboo can be used for so much more. In Asia, Bamboo is used for construction for buildings furniture, and can even replace rebar in concrete; it is used to make toys, cooking or eating utensils, things that need to be sanitary; it can be made into baskets; it can be processed into wool to make amazingly soft clothes; and in Japan the shoots are served as a delicacy. I have researched some companies who are now experimenting with bamboo and its fibers to create composites that has the potential to replace harmful materials like fiberglass, and plastics. My goal with Project Bamboo is to change the perception of bamboo as just a gardening plant, and to show everyone the potential of bamboo as a natural alternative to plastics. I have two types of wall mounted hangers made from bamboo so far with several material study samples, and will present these and others at the Symposium.

Mother TereSlut

Presenter: Alexa Beck

Mentor: Alex Krajkowski, Art Psychology

Creative Work Project: C9 (Ballroom)

Major: Psychology

Our present culture consists of the sexually liberated man and the only-when-appropriate sexually liberated woman. Men can be both wholesome and sexual while women have to choose between the two and if she is both she has to hide her sexual side. Through a compilation of large photographs, I will expose a hidden side of female sexuality that many choose to believe doesn’t exist: women’s sexual desires and female orgasms. In a lecture called Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance, Nancy Tuana revealed that 30% of women engaged in sexual activities are preorgasmic meaning that they have never achieved an orgasm. Therefore, she recommends that women masturbate because, compared to 75% of men, only 1/3 of women regularly achieve an orgasm from partnered sex. This current body of work was meant to be a distant relative of Hannah Altman’s “And Everything Nice.” In Altman’s piece, she captures the glorification of all women’s constant need to be beautiful, in every context. The social stigma of this continuous beauty inspired the social stigma within women’s sexuality and its limitations. This work intersects with Altman’s work in that they both are meant to make the audience question the way they view women, in various circumstances. The base of this creative work and representation of these ideas are showcased through the virgin-whore dichotomy. The two opposing concepts come together over the same main point about women’s sexuality and masturbation. Women are just becoming known for their own sexuality and they need to own it. Women and men are supposed to be equal so women should be enjoying sex as much as men, right?

On the Nature of Space and Breath

Presenter: Alexander Bean

Mentor: Robert Kyr, School of Music

Creative Work Presentation: C3 (Oak Room)

Major: Music Composition and Organ Performance 

Traditional Western vocal music, especially in the art song music of the 19th century, text is of primary importance to the meaning of the work. This approach to vocal music obscures the physical generation of speech sounds, as well as their interaction with the acoustics of the space in which they are being produced. In my song for solo voice, space and breath, I take the opposite approach, composing physical speech sounds that have no semantic meaning. I accomplish this objective by composing pure sound without text, and instead, I transcribe exact phonemes using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The performer is given a particular set of resonant frequencies (those pitches which sound the clearest in a particular room) in order to control the interactions between the phonemes and the performance space. In my presentation, I will discuss the International Phonetic Alphabet as a means of notating the range of speech sounds that humans can produce. Moreover, I will explain how I organize these sounds, which I use to shape the dramatic arc of the piece. Finally, I will perform my work, and make some final comments about the structure of the piece.