GPS drawing

For the GPS drawing our group decided to split up into two separate smaller groups. One of the groups walked and one of the groups drove to our pre-determined destination. Each group had a set of guidelines that they could follow to get to their destination, for example having to make at least three u-turns before reaching your destination, or another rule even though it sounds silly was to get coffee. This rule turned out to be way more important but we overshot the destination and had to make a u-turn, so it worked out perfectly. Once we arrived at the pre-determined address we couldn't find the other half of our group. We knew that it was some sort of abandoned building but we didn't know where it was. After searching and we finally found the rest of our group amongst these abandoned buildings conversing with a few homeless men. As cool and as interesting of a place these abandoned buildings were I felt that I was an intruder of these homeless men space. Even though these buildings totally belong to someone else, these homeless men had clearly made these buildings their home. One of the homeless men throwing out threats that it wasn't a safe place to be, or that their was arsenic poisoning in the buildings. Whereas the other homeless man wanted to take us and show us all around the buildings. I thought overall the experience was very interesting, and doing the GPS drawing became more about the destination than the actual creation of a drawing.

Doors Open Milwaukee

For Doors Open Milwaukee I decided to go to the Pabst Brewery with fellow classmate, Lisa Press. I react very similar to her post, as in that it wasn't all that open. First off it wasn't well directed on where were suppose to go and lots of people were just poking around in the gift shop until we asked where we should go. We finally found the "open" part which was basically part of the brewery that they remodeling into a new restaurant. There was a few rooms open to snoop around in, one in particular was a room set up like an office. I really doubt that this office was actually being used at the time because of the renovations. I did take a picture of the desk because there was a photograph of a man that actually was talking in the other room. So it was interesting that maybe this guy usually isn't around talking about the Pabst Brewery, but he was on that Sunday.

Micro/Macro

Whenever I go to the beach I always think of how brutal the sun is going to be to my fair skin. Since I have this problem I always make sure to pack my SPF protection or sunscreen. Bradford beach makes me thinkof many things, but one object I think of is this particular bottle of spray sun screen, which than makes me think of a specific trip to the beach. I'm a summer camp counselor out in Pennsylvania and this particular bottle of sun screen was actually one that a camper left behind this previous summer, I of course naturally took this sun screen bottle as my own. When I went to the beach back in August I whipped out my newly aqquired sunscreen bottle, and the people who accompanied me and I had a good laugh about it. So in reality the beach is reminding me of anobject, which is than reminding me of a memory.

Thinking of an object that reminded me of a place in Milwaukee was difficult. I find many of the objects that I possess relate to the place that I got them from. I finally decided that a certain wig reminded me of Foundations, a bar located in Riverwest. This particular wig is from a character that I created for a collaborative project, "Louise and Chadd". The very first picture that was taken for this project was taken at foundations, so when I look at the little black bob wig with a red bow on it I think of Foundations.

I collaborated with other classmates Ally Santiago, and Lisa Press to create a break in some ones path. With this in mind we laid out strawberry popcorn seeds and dry bean

s in a long snake like pattern. This is similar to my small personal intervention because yet again the person has to decide what to do as they are walking past this. I was very curious to see how people would react to this random design on the sidewalk. Surprisingly when I checked the next morning our snake like design was left pretty much the same. I did receive a text from my landlord asking if I was responsible for the twenty foot bean snake on our sidewalk, but he also took a picture of it too, which I thought was pretty interesting.

(Photograph taken by my landlord a few hours after we had made it.)

Personal/Public

I love driving places, and often find that my mind is most at ease when I'm alone driving somewhere. For the past four summers I have a done a fifteen hour car drive out to Pennsylvania, a majority of the time by myself. For the most part I have taken the exact same route each time I make this drive. Along my drive there are many points that I feel have important meaning to me, whereas another driver would just think its part of the route.

The drive is a rather long and pretty boring drive a majority of the time. You have Illinois with the short excitement of Chicago, unless you are driving through there when there is traffic, then you'll unfortunately be sitting there for about an hour or so. Indiana and Ohio are pretty much the same, flat, boring, and their tollways are ridiculous. However the best part of the drive has to be when I would finally reach Pennsylvania. The environment pretty much instantly changes from flat boringness to lush hills and mountains. Besides this being the best and most exciting part of the road trip out it also is a spot where I always think about my Grandmother. Before my drive out there in 2010 I had stopped at my Grandmas house in Iowa because things were not going so well, and I wanted to say "goodbye" to her before I left for my summer job. My grandma always loved sunsets or sunrises especially when they faded from pinks, purples, oranges. Well on this particular drive I reached that awesome part of my drive right as the sun was rising, with all these beautiful colors that I knew my Grandma would love. This was particularly special moment to me because I pretty much knew that earlier when I said "goodbye" to my grandma that it was the last time, and she did end up dying a week later and I flew to Iowa for the funeral, but whenever I drive this route I always think about my Grandma when I'm entering Pennsylvania because of that beautiful sunset and the moment that was shared at this location.

coordinates: 41.171043,-79.719938

3 Days, 3 Ways-Amber Blanchard

Way 1 (bus) Riding the bus was way different than walking. I couldn’t really observe my surroundings of area that I was traveling. When riding in a bus all the people that were on the bus distracted me. Also when reflecting on my first walk I couldn’t hear really any of my surroundings. In my first notes I wrote down how I noticed my path be loud, then quiet, and then loud again. When riding the bus I could really hear was the loud bus noises, from it stopping and going. Also I mention smells in my initial walk, when on the bus I couldn’t really smell any of those great things rather all I could smell was the city bus. I think taking this route was much less enjoyable because I was so contained to one space. Whereas I feel when I was walking my senses had much more available to them.

Way 2 (driving) Driving myself was similar to taking the bus but also different in ways. When I drove by myself I started off with the music off in my car and the windows down. When I did this all I could hear was the clicking noise from my car that was just clearly telling me that something was wrong with my car. After I couldn’t listen to that repetitive noise anymore I turned on my car radio. By doing this it really muffled out other noises in the environment, similar to the bus, however this time I was making the decision to drown out the atmospheres sounds. Along my drive I drove through Sils coffee and donuts. I mention that on my walk I could smell as I passed the building by foot, when driving past it I couldn’t really smell it but I saw it, and the convenience of driving through to get a coffee, lazy I know, but it was delicious coffee nonetheless. When driving in the car I felt I was able to create my own little world, of smells and noises and sights. In the bus the environment was controlled, contained and created by me and other people. Walking, I was in the environment that was created by everyone, and everything surrounding me, I was more so absorbing my surroundings.

Way 3 (riding as a passenger in a car) Riding in someone else’s car with someone else driving brings a whole new environment. I purposely didn’t tell them that I was doing this as an assignment because I wanted my driver to act as natural as possible. Also my driver was upset and confused why I wanted to take this certain path that was “a way round about way to getting downtown”. Because of this I believe that my driver was driving fast just trying to get from one place to the next. They also had their music blaring as loud as possible. So I’d say I probably got the least of the experience this way. I barely paid attention to my surroundings and more attention to the road and the other cars that were surrounding this crazy driver and me. Even though this might have been the environment that I had the least sensual experience during it was still an experience. The smells of the leftover fast food bags in the back seat, or the spilled coffee from the day before and the sounds of the blaring music, extreme road rage, and my “oh my gosh are you going to stop” all added to the experience.