Mental Soundtrack

Alison Lee Schroeder

Mixed media installation with audio, living room furniture, original record jacket designs

2019

Mental Soundtrack is a multimedia installation which displays a group of fictitious albums and an audio piece playing through headphones at a record player.

Music is important to me as it helps me process the changes in my life, and, like art, can often communicate a precise feeling that can be felt in no other way. I have no real experience in making music, so I depend on the voices and rhythms of others to speak for me. In this case, I did a little of that, and the rest I just made up.

I designed the record jackets using paintings (and one photograph) of mine, conceptualizing particular genres and themes for each album. The band and singer/songwriter names are all based on different parts of my experience and personality, forming a collective self-portrait through various alter-egos. The fake music reviews I wrote are all very positive, considering none of the music actually exists aside from a single track on the "Times are Hard" album by the band "La Cabrona Realidad."

This track is a metaphor for my experience as an immigrant in Mexico. Having grown up in the United States, I had a lot of different information and voices that gave shape to my expectations about the culture and the country that I would encounter in Mexico. Over the course of twelve years living within a reality there, most of that information lost its meaning, while certain parts of it held deep truths.

The creative process that I followed for the development of this piece was joyful and unpredictable. I often was left feeling as though I were doing it all backwards. I am now exploring possible audio for all the other records I imagined.

The audio recording, an essential element to this piece, was made possible with the help of John McCrea, the band Cake, James Taylor, Jimmy Kennedy, Michael Carr, Tency Music, Dave Mallen at Innovation Station, Karaoke Versions, and Tommy Manzi.