GPS Drawing

For our GPS drawing, we decided not to travel in any straight lines. Every time we came across an intersection, whether it be two streets or a street and an alley, etc. we took turns deciding whether to turn left or right. It was interesting to navigate the city in this way - we noticed a lot of buildings and backstreets that would otherwise go unnoticed on our usual routes. Funny thing was, as soon as we felt like we were getting somewhere entirely new and unfamiliar, a wrong turn onto the freeway put us right back where we started.

Micro/Macro

(video of intervention @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rgUf4c4x14)

There's a large undeveloped area at the intersection of Water St. and Ogden. I’d seen it by bus and by car several times, but the immediate experience of the space is completely different. It seems much more vast, especially the sky, which

appears to extend upward in an enormous arc. The ground is gravel overgrown with wild plants, and the sound of the crickets is sonorous and entrancing. It's a space that once was something else, now barren and open.

I was drawn to the aural qualities of the area, so I decided to play my violin there. My grandfather made my instrument, and it's something I usually pull out on my own, enclosed in my apartment. My hope was that such a maneuver made public would call attention to the space's inherent beauty.

Sound is an experience that is inseparable from place in a somewhat different manner than the visual. It's comprised of waves rippling through the atmosphere that morph as they meet and merge with another force, like the reverberations of a passing car, or the wind. Just blocks away, along Water St., there is another site whose structure was made intentionally for acoustics, that I've chosen as my second location. This is the Pabst Mansion (image below), which was built in 1895 in the tradition of the great European opera houses, displaying ornate Baroque architecture. Though much more grandiose than my own little performance on an overgrown and polluted plot of land, it carries a similar purpose, and this is intriguing.

"Pabst Theater". Bradley Center. 2003-2011. Web. 22 Sept. 2011. <;http://www.bradleycenter.com/milwaukeeinfo/moreentertainment.asp>.

Personal/Public

I lived most of my life in Dousman. If you’ve never heard of it, which is often the case, it’s a village about 45 miles west of Milwaukee, whose population has recently grown to around 1,700. My family still lives there, so I go back to visit every now and then. When I do, I frequently end up taking a walk on the bike trail. That’s what we always called it, although it’s officially part of the Glacial Drumlin State Trail. Since I was about seven I’ve been trekking this path, by bike or foot, with friends or just on my own. A main point of interest is always what we call the “first bridge.” As its name implies, it’s the first bridge one encounters when heading west on the trail. It’s old, the wood weathered, a slight trough in the middle along its entire length, formed by the repetition of one course by many for years. I remember my cousin and I exploring out here. We would crawl over the railing and sit on the wooden beams that jutted out from the sides, overlooking the river. We would slip through the grasses down to the river shore beneath the bridge and skip stones. In the winter, we’d tiptoe out onto the ice. I think my cousin almost fell through once. But we liked the risk.

In the river and along the trail there were rusty railroad stakes and abandoned railroad ties being overgrown with forest plants. At the time we didn’t know what they were and we were fascinated by the mystery. Then we learned that the trail had been a major railroad established in the mid-nineteenth century. Dousman was the main hub between Madison and Milwaukee. This only further provoked my curiosity. From then on, whenever I walked the trail, I wondered who had traveled that same route one-hundred years before me. I looked to the enormous trees on either side me, wanting to know if any had been there to witness it. I still think of these things when I trod this path today. I still stop at the first bridge, observe what new names have been carved into the railing, and gaze down into the water. I look far, across the winding river, and try to conceive of the movements of glaciers, and rock, and the burgeoning of vegetation that have shaped this place over millennia.

Railroad Station, 1916

Dousman, WI Area History. Dousman Chamber of Commerce. Web. 15 Sept. 2011.