11.14.16 Part 1

Oftentimes, when telling personal anecdotes, I find myself needing to step back and give more information. I'm fearful that my story won't make sense or will seem too random, so I backtrack. To me, this is everything in respects to oral history. We pride ourselves in being concise and professional when giving a presentation, but ask us about our mother's favorite sweater and we find ourselves lost in detail.

So it is that Multi-modal pieces such as The Olive Project take on a life of their own. They transform into a story told not only by the subject but by the person asking the details as well. The interviewer helps to give the history structure, while the interviewee breathes life. When telling stories, we can oftentimes leave out details only to remember them later. Or we remember things in the middle of telling a story that's completely irrelevant.

As people asking these details of a personal oral history, it is our job to add structure or "map coherence", make sense of something that would otherwise be jumbled and confused.