Technology | Art of Voices #ZHill

Technology

This Art of Voices illustration is dedicated to Cody Brown. 

There are specific youth who inspired significant and creative change for how the Voices Behind Walls program was structured.  Especially when it came to technology.  Cody was a mastermind.  However, I didn't get that impression when he first visited the workshop.  He brought a lot of energy (sometimes too much) especially when it was his turn to get on the mic. He referred to himself as "Moose". I remember on one occasion an argument suddenly erupted with another youth about something Cody said in his rhymes.  The other youth was upset enough that I worried the disagreement would quickly turn into a fight.  At the conclusion of the workshop I had a talk with them to cool out as they made their way back to the unit.

Over the next few months there were gaps in time when Cody wasn't allowed to participate in the workshop.  In my early and scattered encounters with Cody I didn't get enough time to gauge just how talented he was.  I did know there was a lot he wanted to say.  He had composition books filled with rhymes and poems. During his first visits to our workshop he provided glimpses of his creative expression, reading and shuffling through pages and pages of some of the most chaotic handwriting I'd ever seen.  His composition books were riddled with disorganized sheets of rhymes and poems that I imagined only he could decipher.

Ultimately, there would be an extended time lapse before Cody would visit our workshop again. Then one day months later...he was back. I was definitely surprised since it seemed so much time had passed and I figured he'd either been released or incarcerated elsewhere in New Mexico's steel maze.  There was something different about Cody this time around. He was more patient, calm, and coherently thoughtful about his plans with VBW. It was at this point that he shared with us his knowledge of how to make music with the technology we had access to.

During Cody's absence, there was a day when I arrived to the juvenile prison and found someone else setting up equipment where we set up.  I had no idea who he was. After we introduced ourselves he told me he drove out from Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo and wanted to help.  Holloman is a long drive away from the facility.  His name was Frederick Tarantino and he mentioned to me his interest in teaching incarcerated youth digital art technology.  He had a couple laptops, a printer, and other gadgets. At first I was concerned that it would spread our time too thin to try and collaborate.  The juvenile prison's schedule required that our program work within a very strict and specific time slot. My focus was to use as much of that time as possible helping youth write and record their poetry or songs. I remember asking myself why the facility didn't grant Frederick his own time to engage with the participants. Frederick's approach was super humble and respectful though so I decided then and there that we could set up learning stations.  Our goal together would be to promote the opportunity for incarcerated youth to engage not only in creative writing and music, but digital art as well.  Participation on Saturday afternoons was on a voluntary basis. One of the challenges we faced was due to visitation with family that was scheduled at the same time. So we often worked around those times to see one group while another visited with family that we'd schedule later in the afternoon. Depending on how the visit went though, sometimes a participant simply wouldn't be in the mood to show up. Nevertheless, Frederick and I decided to work together to figure out how we wanted to structure programming so that it was convenient and respectful of the youth's time and circumstance. 

Over the course of my time at the juvenile prison, our workshop space often changed.  This especially depended on whether or not there was a key to open a specific door.  Security staff had what seemed like a hoolahoop of keys that gave access to specific classrooms, the library, and other spaces throughout the facility.  Sometimes I received an excuse that a supervisor's shift ended and they forgot to leave the right set of keys.  Since I had to travel more than 100 miles round trip to get to the facility, before deciding to cancel a workshop because of space I exhausted all options to improvise.  This often involved setting up our workshop in a lobby space or a hallway.  Anywhere that was allowable security wise and where there was at least one electrical outlet.  We also borrowed chairs from the gym nearby where visitations took place and helped each other drag table tops or desks closer to the outlets to set up and plug in equipment.  

As Frederick became familiar with the Voices Behind Walls workshop, he mentioned that one of the laptops he had contained music producing software.  Little did I know that things were about to change because of this.  Especially for participants like Cody who we learned grew up in a family of musicians and knew how to play all sorts of instruments.  Because of this Cody also seemed to know just about everything there was to know about music software programs.  We presented the laptop that included Fruity Loops music software to Cody and he quickly maxed out what it was capable of.  He recommended that we install another kind of software instead that had more functions.  Watching Cody work on the laptop was really something.  The new music software we installed that he recommended often made the laptop crash.  But Cody always figured out a way to work around it by saving, restarting, rendering, etc.  He was like a mad scientist with a solution for everything we thought the laptop couldn't do.  Often the laptop would let out all this air as if it was suffocating to keep up with Cody's imagination.  

Without Frederick, we would never have discovered what youth like Cody were capable of.  There were other incarcerated youth who thanks to the equipment Frederick gave access to were granted permission to check out the equipment for use in their units outside of workshop time. Progress like this inspired all kinds of dreams so we requested support from New Mexico State University departments to purchase more studio equipment. We even came up with a proposal for the juvenile facility to let us build a recording studio in a small classroom space that was no longer being used. The proposal involved collaboration with outside music educators, musicians and youth like Cody to build it piece by piece. I was also able to secure a donation of a piano from a tuner in El Paso who was willing to help transport and set up the piano at the facility.  I didn't foresee the problems ahead as leadership turnover and changes at the facility started to happen.  Before I knew it a different administrator would arrive and reject our studio proposal and the piano donation. Thanks to Cody though there were donations we were able to secure for portable recording equipment, headphones, microphones, blank CDs, composition books, and other items. This wouldn't have been possible without Cody who we regarded as a prodigy of creative expression.

In the illustration shown above, Zachary Hill depicts Cody's reflection from the laptop he used to make beats.  One day he was attempting to teach me how it worked.  Watching him compose a beat was a site to see as he went from one function to the next playing us clips to listen to along the way. "Just gotta read the manuals..." he'd say.  As I tried to follow his instructions from the angle where I was sitting, I noticed his reflection inside the laptop monitor and asked if I could take a shot with my camera.  I wanted to capture Cody's reflection along with the music software that he was teaching us from the screen. The illustration exaggerates his expression from the original photograph and is inspired by Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" video from 1986.  I got the opportunity to meet Cody's father who taught me a lot about the juvenile prison system's impact on families in New Mexico. He has quite a story in so far as what he did to advocate for the closure of one of New Mexico's worst juvenile facilities and one of the oldest in the country.  Cody's father is also a multimedia genius and musician. I remember Cody mentioning to me that his father was in a band during the 80s.  I also had the chance to talk with Cody's mother who I learned is also a musician and teaches piano in the community. 

In our workshop, Cody created original music thanks to the support of individuals like Frederick Tarantino.  Frederick literally came out of nowhere at just the right time with just the right equipment! I hope the future grants me with time to share Cody's audio recordings, including his poems and entertaining freestyle sessions.

Til' this day, whenever I'm conducting a recording session with someone I eventually tell them Cody's story...legend of the Moose.

#Lee

Art of Voices is a Voices Behind Walls (VBW) project supported by Community Solutions of El Paso to recruit illustrators through Volunteer Match to help recreate VBW workshop photographs into art.  The photographs were taken during workshop activities in juvenile detention between the years of 2006-2014.  Artistic remakes of the photographs protect the identity of workshop participants by changing details of face and other identifiers.  The purpose of this project is to document the VBW program's history and the creative expression activities incarcerated youth were engaged in.  This project also offers the VBW photographer and illustrators an opportunity to reflect on what the images say about the juvenile justice system and the importance of creative expression activity for youth as a means of education, therapy, self-improvement, community engagement, rehabilitation, positive Hip Hop activity, and mentorship.