art:308 (sculpture studio)

hannah piper burns

project 1: process
"neurosis maps"

In this particular work, I chose to focus on my own personal process of being a passenger in a car. In order to make a work about the process, I decided that the product should be a visual record of that process. For the visual language of the piece I chose to operate within several vernaculars simultaneously: a cartography vernacular, a medical vernacular, and a seismographic vernacular. By holding a pen to graph paper and recording both the bumps, turns, and other movements of the vehicle and my own response to those movements I was able to make a mark that combined the processes of both getting from one location to another and my psychological state throughout the ride. The movement of the car caused the pen to move along the paper, recording distance as well as changes in the car’s position and speed, two things that I am normally hyper-aware of as a passenger. I engaged in the process five times with three different drivers, and to a variety of locations. I tried very hard not to look down at the paper, in case I would unintentionally affect the process. The lines were made with a fine point black pen, and imitated the marks made by machines that measure stress levels of the body (polygraphs), the heart (EKG machines), and earthquakes (seismographs). I felt that this was an appropriate way to record the process of me being a passenger because it is an extremely stressful process for me, and the level of stress I experience usually depends on the driver and the choices they make involving speed, changing lanes, running lights, etc. I like that all of the marks are located on the same sheet of graph paper, because I feel that it gives the aura of a printout made by one of these machines.
I feel that the weakest part of my final product is the mapping element. My psychological processes are shown, I believe, very clearly by comparing the five sets of marks, however the viewer is not given much information about the actual journey other than the labels I provided with each line, giving the departure location, destination location, and driver. If someone is familiar with the area in which the process was recorded (all of the destinations were located approximately fifteen minutes from their departure points, and therefore extremely localized), he or she might be able to make more meaning from the piece in a cartographic sense- for example, the mark that represents the trip to Webster Field, which is on a long, winding road in a rural area, is notably different from the marks made by trips into more urban and commercial areas that necessitate more stops and lane changes. However, there seem to be more similarities between marks made by the same driver than between marks made on the way to similar destinations. If I could develop a more standardized way of measuring distance, for example utilizing the graph paper as a tool and not just as an aesthetic reference or providing information such as mileage, actual time, or number of songs played on the radio, then perhaps I could resolve this issue.

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