Category: Creative Work

95% of people want to take a vacation: Creating a world we don’t wish to escape from

Presenter: Elise O’Brien – Planning, Public Policy and Management

Faculty Mentor(s): Lisa Abia-Smith

Session: (Virtual) Creative Work—Connection, Escapism, Poetry and Exercise

The title of my piece refers to a statistic produced by a cruise ship company. Lisa Abia-Smith gave my class an assignment to visually represent a statistic. I chose “95% of people want to take a vacation.” To me this seemingly frivolous and meaningless statistic belies a deeper truth about our society: people are seeking escape. How can we build a society we don’t seek to escape from? How can we escape INTO our lives instead of away from them? How do we aim for utopia? It is my personal belief that this shift starts within and that it starts with empathy. To combat the empathy deficit that is a root factor in the growing housing crisis, I have developed a meditation for the unhoused. Please join me in a guided meditation where we explore the feeling of being lost: without papers and without home. We will meet a guide who will take us to a transitional village where we can explore feelings of relief and safety. What is safety? What is home? This meditation was designed with planners and landscape architects in mind and has space for design ideas to surface. Bring a paper and pen to jot down insights.

The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde’ Relationship with and Reclamation of Tumwata

Presenter: Catelynn Henion − Educational Foundations

Faculty Mentor(s): Leilani Sabzalian

Session: (Virtual) Creative Work—Connection, Escapism, Poetry and Exercise

In 2019, The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde purchased land at Tumwata (Willamette Falls). The falls are of great cultural significance to the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde, and the purchase of this land is a reclamation of part of the Tribe’s ancestral homelands.

This project began in my class EDST 456 Decolonization and Education, taught by Dr. Lelani Sabzalian. The goal of my project was to answer the following questions, “how would one teach about Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde’s relationship and reclamation of the Tumwata land” and “what foundational knowledge is necessary for students to contextualize this reclamation within a larger scope of the settler-colonial society in which we live?”

I created a website to answer these questions and prepare myself to contextualize and teach about this relationship and reclamation in the future; this website serves as a compilation of resources. With the mentorship of Dr. Sabzalian, I have grown the scope of my project. This website is a work in progress and is not an exhaustive list of information or resources but rather a starting point for me as a white settler, student, and future educator to engage in critical conversations, actions, and lessons about the falls respectfully and responsibly.

Overwhelmed: A Collection of Short Stories Illustrating Diverse Mental Health Struggles

Presenter: Jordan Coen − Educational Foundations

Faculty Mentor(s): Elizabeth Wallace

(Virtual) Creative Work—Connection, Escapism, Poetry and Exercise

For these four pieces, I decided to explore different mental health struggles through both nonfiction and fiction. In order to do this, I explored different styles in each one. In Panic Atta-, I told the story in chronological order of my earlier panic attacks by noting the dates that I experienced them. In Dr . Dooley, I wrote the story, which is the beginning of my memoir that I’m working on, in second person because by using second person, my readers will feel as if they’re the main character and I think that’s important for Dr . Dooley. For Finally Seeing Clearly, I drew from my experience of emotional abuse and put that into Adiana’s character. Additionally, I wrote Finally Seeing Clearly in two different perspectives because I think when writing about abuse that it’s important to see other people’s perspectives, especially, from friends. I can personally relate to each of these stories, whether that be a nonfiction piece that happened to me or a fiction piece in which part of the story is true for me. Last summer, I was introduced to writing nonfiction and fell in love with the genre–I’m grateful to be able to share some of my writing.

Unrequited: Poems Devoted to One-Sided Love

Presenter: Jordan Coen − Educational Foundations

Faculty Mentor(s): Elizabeth Wallace

(Virtual) Creative Work—Connection, Escapism, Poetry and Exercise

For these three pieces, I explored one-sided love and how it feels . I believe one-sided love is something that needs more light shed on it, and I want to be a part of that effort . To convey how one-sided love looks and feels, I used different types of poetry–a sonnet titled Sour Love, a free verse titled It Didn’t Click, and a rhyming poem titled Candy Consumed . For It Didn’t Click, I wanted the poem to not only sound, but also look like how I felt during the time in which the poem is set . When I bolded any words in this poem, it was for emphasis just as when words or sentences went up or down like stairs . For Candy Consumed, I was challenged to work with a candy theme for a contest . The poem had to be angry, and it had to be rhyming, so I decided to write about my first, and only break-up . I’m very close to all three of these pieces, as they address my experiences .

Demystifying the Tracker Workflow: How exactly WAS video game music made?

Presenter: Kobe Anthony − Music Technology

Faculty Mentor(s): Jon Bellona

(In-Person) Creative Work—Learning from the Environment

Music trackers are instruments that artists leverage to compose videogame soundtracks. My goal is to understand how this music tracking software works in an effort to demystify the barrier between contemporary music and videogame music.

Trackers are unique from modern music sequencers. However, since the music recording industry relies primarily on digital audio workstations (DAW),The music tracker medium is underrepresented in creative research.

I have incorporated one such tracker, the Polyend Tracker, into a music EP by playing sound material directly from the tracker. Samples for the Polyend tracker will be based upon previous music I have created.

I have found throughout this research that the tracker workflow both strengthens and weakens aspects of the creative process, explaining both the reason early video game music has its characteristic sound, as well as the expertise that has gone into video game music production over the years.

From this research, I have determined Trackers are immensely powerful pieces of hardware that transcend the implications of their age, however, trackers are clearly much better suited for sample manipulation and sequencing than things like sound design and synthesis.

The creation of a 3-song EP using a Polyend hardware music tracker extends digital audio creative research and supports vital music industry practice, both of which further prepares me for work in the digital gaming and music-for-media industries.