Since I have started this project, and especially lately, I am frequently asked about what the final product will be. Initially I told people that I wanted to locate an archive or library to deposit them. This made sense (and still does) because libraries and archives are the natural home for oral history interviews; they are the best equipped for handling preservation, transcription, and access. Then, somewhere along the way in my travels, I think it was at Leo Adams’ house, people began suggesting a that the final product would be a book (a suggestion that terrifies me by the way) and after a while I found myself not disagreeing or correcting people. However, this is mostly because I just didn’t know. There are pros and cons to both options and I am weighing out each. In the meantime, I am focusing on the journey (collecting and processing interviews) rather than the destination.
Read moreDoes that kind of artist actually exist?
When I started this project I knew exactly the type of artist I wanted to interview. While there are many ways to be a practicing artist and many ways to make a living as an artist, there is a particular slice of the artist’s life I want to look at. Before I go any further, let me first present my criteria with my reasoning for each:
Read moreThe Power of Sound
The person who invented sound recording was partially deaf. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the phonograph was hard of hearing. He may not have been able to hear birds sing, as he famously said, but he could hear enough to create a machine that would change our world of sound.
Read moreWhat is oral history?
Between Art Stories and coordinating the start of an oral history program at CalArts, where I am a librarian, I have been having a lot of conversations with experienced oral historians, reading as much as I can get my hands on, and simply thinking a lot about oral history. I also find myself in a lot of conversations now explaining (or rather, trying to explain) what oral history is.
Read moreBeginnings
Last week I traveled to the Bay Area to conduct my first interviews. I have been preparing for the start of this project for several months now. It was December that I began developing the project and since then I have been working on setting the criteria for narrators (interviewees), writing up the description, thinking about what I really want to accomplish and working the interview guide, re-working the interview guide, tearing up the interview guide and starting over. Now I realize that I placed all of my anxiety about this project into that interview guide.
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