Evelynn (Yijia) Chen

At the beginning of the semester, Professor Kori said to be present, listen to the world around you. I found a recording of a faint ice cream truck music I recorded when I first heard it in New York and used that as a starting point.

I’ve always loved ice cream, my dream when I was a kid was to scoop ice cream and open my shop. I’ve seen and heard all about the ice cream truck but never actually seen one in real life until I came to New York.

To a kid, a dream job is an element of the future, and you think you know exactly what you want to do. Now that I’m older, the future is still uncertain to me, and sometimes I get anxious about it. I chose to use an ice cream truck as a metaphor for “the future”.

The story is of two figures communicating, one of which is me, sitting there and being interviewed. I chose to put elements of ice cream and the ice cream truck as quick frames on the screen, paired with a recreation of a drawing I made as a kid of my ice cream cart on the road along with the recording of the ice cream truck music. Everything is mixed, progressively showing more and more of the ice cream, but still feeling like a chaotic fever dream. In the text (narration) on screen, all aspects of ice cream and the ice cream truck are described to me by another figure on screen, yet I don’t have an answer when asked what all of this means. I may have grown from being a kid, but the future I thought would be present now is still ahead and unknown.