Measuring Project

For this project, we were tasked with the assignment of artistically creating a way to measure a part of our history- our cultural history, ancestral history, or personal history. I struggled for a while to come up with an idea that felt meaningful to me, but decided to measure an aspect of my personal history- in particular, the amount of time I spend in the theatre.

As a theatre major, I obviously spend a lot of time in the theatre, though I had no idea how much actual time I spent there. I began the assignment by calculating the amount of time I spend in the theatre during a semester and found I spend about 150 hours there per semester. That takes into account weekly rehearsals, classes, and other things I do there. I debated what to do with this information- should I draw a line 150 inches long? Should I cut out 150 pieces of something? I settled on printing out pictures of time I'd spent in any theatre and taping them together. I cut out a line in the middle of them- not to represent the time I do spend in the theatre, but the time I'm not spending in the theatre this semester, but in other circumstances would.

The photos I chose were all of sets- partly to avoid the distraction of looking at crowded pictures of people, but more so because my career-goal is to be a scenic designer so I pay particular attention to set designs. The photos were a combinations of sets I'd designed, models I'd made, and sets from professional productions of pictures I took because I thought they were cool.

Part of what ended up being really cool about the finished piece was with the big strip cut out of the middle, it served as a way to look into the theatre. These were all photos from inside of theatres, and I put the installation on the outside of the building as a way of looking in on what could be. While taking pictures to document the piece, I also saw my own reflection in the window, bringing further meaning to looking in and reflecting on the theatrical experiences I have had and am having.