Ashley

Symposium Proposal

Live Art Ritual – 5 minutes on the 29

Script: Ride the bus. Keep bag on your lap. Lift and set down the bag at every stop.

Artist’s Statement:

My commute typically involves me zoning out, staring at my phone or out the window, or mentally preparing for classes or homework. I interrupted this dissociative ritual of my commute by the intermittent displacement and replacement of my bag, which normally I keep on my lap. This process was an attempt to reground myself into the physical and auditory environment of the GO bus. Weight or pressure on the body is a technique known as deep pressure therapy, meant to engage the parasympathetic nervous system (known for it’s “rest and digest” function, in contrast to the sympathetic nervous system’s “fight or flight”). I found it difficult to break from my routine of ignoring my surroundings and instead focusing on the movements and sounds of the bus slowing down and stopping. Since there is only ever two formal bus stops on my route, I decided to interpret the script as every time the bus physically stopped, such as at a light or due to traffic. The audio format I chose to capture this ritual in helps to demonstrate the efforts of paying attention to one particular sense. Along with being able to hear the sound of the engine and people quietly talking, it captures the rustling and occasional click or tap of the bag moving against me and the side of the bus as I raised and lowered it.

Moments of Magic:

Sound Object – elastic fort

I wasn’t one of those kids who couldn’t wait to be an adult, I enjoyed my childhood and was not eager for change. For this project, I wanted to create an instrument that engages with nostalgia, and was thinking about sound and memory as two things that are incredibly difficult to contain. I decided to enlarge an instrument I made many times over my childhood, a tissue box guitar. Entering the object physically is in a way attempting to re-enter the past, and I considered both a helmet version and the larger, full body box I ended up choosing. This larger design reminded me of forts I made as a child, and overall felt that it would facilitate a more transportive experience. I wanted to limit my materials and use tools and objects I already owned, the duct tape and exercise resistance bands, and using a base that is ultimately not permanent and is destined for the recycling. I didn’t want to be precious or sophisticated with the construction of the object, instead focusing on having fun with it and engaging with a less stressful way of creating. The sound the instrument makes is different from the classic tissue box guitar, it is deeper, harder to play, and (somehow) even less consistent with the noises it produces, mirroring how memories distort and change over the years. The instrument seeks to take the player back to an earlier space, but cannot do it exactly in the right way.

Symposium Bibliography

Dövencioglu, Dicle N., et al. “Seeing through Transparent Layers.” Journal of Vision (Charlottesville, Va.), vol. 18, no. 9, 2018, p. 25, https://doi.org/10.1167/18.9.25.

Gislén, Anna, et al. “Visual Training Improves Underwater Vision in Children.” Vision Research (Oxford), vol. 46, no. 20, 2006, pp. 3443–50, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2006.05.004.

Horváth, Gábor., editor. Polarized Light and Polarization Vision in Animal Sciences. 2nd ed. 2014., Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014, Ch. 1, 5, 7-10, 14, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54718-8.

Sinclair, Kai. “Watch the Secret to a Squid’s Crystal Clear Underwater Vision.” Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2017, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aan7226.

Tanchez, Ashley. Series of Experiments Involving Water. October- November, 2025.

Speculative Video – Your Brain & Migraine ASMR (relaxing) (tapping)

The original script:

The videos I used were a combination of my personal archive (at 3:15, and 3:43) and videos from Pixabay (0:05, Ants, Insects, Run. Free Stock Video – Pixabay; 1:02, Drill, Tool, Metal. Free Stock Video – Pixabay; 1:15, Pills, Medicine, Pharmacy. Free Stock Video – Pixabay; and beginning at 2:48, Clouds, Sky, Cloudy. Free Stock Video – Pixabay). The sounds are ones I recorded for this video.

The concept came from speculating what it would feel like to have what was a thirty second pause in migraine symptoms be a complete end of them. In order to convey the absence of pain I felt it was necessary to also represent the pain, as the contrast would help make the difference more significant, and also relay a narrative. The ties to ASMR mainly came about from the noise sensitivity that occurs as a part of migraine, and my original observation that the lack of pain in those thirty seconds felt like “a nothing head” which upon research became tied to the relaxing, calming environments ASMR artists advertise in their videos. Inspiration also arose from Lizzy Rose’s Sick, blue sea, and the expression of an illness with an internet-y medium such as a Tumblr blog. I wanted to also include a sense of the passage of time, which I chose to do with a calendar feature on my phone, which can be to count down to or up from an event. The screenshots for days 590-595 were captured authentically, but for the ones before that I changed the date of the event to lower the number and edited the correct date overtop. This video was really an interesting experience personally, as I found that my own feelings about an end of migraine pain has changed significantly since the thirty second pause. It can be tempting to think about consistent pain as something that has an achievable ending, that you can picture yourself without one day, in many cases due to not always having it. With a chronic condition, I found that excessively hoping for a full ending of pain (even though hope can be a very nice thing!) can be more damaging than helpful, and recognition and a level of acceptance of one’s current state is a key part of living in the present. Rather than putting off things for a time I feel completely better, it has become important to seize and make the most of the easier moments between the more difficult ones. This speculative video process was pretty cathartic, and was an interesting way of exploring a possibility, to wonder about but not waste life waiting for.

Symposium – Looking Through Water

I didn’t follow the script exactly, I mainly used it as a guide throughout my presentation! Here are some extra behind-the-scenes stuff: