MCAD MFA

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Dennis Madamba ’14, Illustration

April 17, 2014

I have always been fascinated by how certain stories came to be. I like to think that the stories we pass on to each other–these folktales, myths, and rumors-all came from one place, when there were fewer people and thus fewer stories to tell. And as people changed and moved around, the stories did too, taking on the characteristics and culture of wherever they were told, with characters, names, and settings adapting to the storyteller’s world. Essentially, perspective creates variation in the stories we tell.

As an illustrator, I am creating art that follows this tradition, taking existing narratives and re-telling them from my point of view. As a result, I hope to encourage viewers to consider the variety of perspectives that can arise from a single source of information and to challenge the viewer’s expectations when presented with something familiar, in this case music. Music presents a diversity of material to interpret, between lyrics and abstract sound, but more importantly it is something we can all relate to. In my process, I take lyrics and sound and examine the different contexts that could arise from this single collection of sounds and words. By presenting the various possibilities of meaning that songs represent, I hope to disrupt what the listener expects to perceive when hearing a specific song. Instead, in presenting a new narrative, I hope to question how we construct our own expectations.

I am focusing on a specific genre of music for this group of work: the TV Theme Song. Theme songs are already associated with established narratives, with specific characters and storylines. I chose songs from programs that are no longer on the air. Because of this added layer of pop culture, these songs resonate with people on a personal level, and at a particular time and place. Creating parallel narratives for these TV shows creates a contrast that challenges the collective memory of what that story means and introduces a new way of thinking about an outdated thing.

Dennis Madamba '14

Dennis Madamba '14