Reflective Essay - Interactive Experiences

An interactive experience that I never tire of and is always vivid in my mind is the experience of being at Disneyland. Being from California, I have been lucky enough to go there more often than other people and it truly is an experience that I can never forget and always leaves a pleasant feeling to me. The drive to Disneyland always gets me piqued with anticipation, my heart starts racing, I start craning my neck to see signs or the buses/shuttles that take you to the park. And boy, once I'm parked and on one of those busses it's a field day. The smile cannot be wiped off my face. There is always an electricity in the air from the excitement from everyone around you, any age, that I have not felt captured anywhere else. Then of course as you get to the park you hear the all-to-familiar Disney songs from the main walkway and you hear the wondrous sound of the chirping when your ticket gets scanned. Main St USA, the smell of the churros and from the ice cream shop on the left, the sight of the horses, the sounds of the marching band, maybe even a parade which has just thrown confetti on the ground, and of course the chatter from everyone around you having the time of their life. To describe the rest of the park and what it means to me would take ages. But everything about it has me feeling like a kid again. I can let go and do and be whatever and whoever I want. The whole surrounding world disappears and it's just me, in the park, having the best time imaginable. To me, everything about it really is the happiest place on earth, and for that, it is one of my most influential interactive experiences.

Obviously no other experience can live up to the grandeur of going to Disneyland, so I'll continue with another very powerful memory. Over the summer I worked at Lionsgate in Santa Monica as an acquisitions intern, and that was crazy. My first day was a tidal wave of sights, sounds, expression, and emotion. Parking in the private back lot for interns, walking around the building, seeing the Lionsgate sign get closer with each step, the heat from a Southern California summer, the smell of exhaust from traffic (as is only possible in LA), the awkward feeling of my new "professional" shoes. Walking into the building and immediately seeing their private screening room with posters up for Buried, Last Exorcism, and Expendables, seeing posters and promotional material on peoples desks for other movies they've released, seeing rows of cubicles all personalized in a fun, interesting way (one person had a life size mummy statue on his desk). To say it was nerve-wracking and overwhelming would be an understatement. It was a great first day, but all the excitement made me sick... but I'd rather not discuss that "interactive experience."

My third experience would be any time I play baseball. It doesn't matter where, how long, or with who, it always makes me feel good and it always brings back floods of memories. Thinking I smell peanuts, pretending I hear the crowds from when going to games, thinking about Field of Dreams. The funny feeling of my bones and muscles twisting with each pitch and the impact in the palm of my hand with each catch. This experience is definitely the most subconscious to me on how it affects me. When I was younger all I wanted to be was a pitcher, I lived, ate, and breathed baseball. Everything about it got me pumped. So whenever I play all those feelings and other memories (like the previously stated games) come back. Obviously I don't really smell peanuts and Shoeless Joe isn't going to walk out and play with me, but those thoughts and feelings come anyway.

I think these experiences can influence my interactive media by trying to create something relatable to people. I want to think of things that can evoke an emotion from someone, not just from what I'm doing, but from how they feel about it, or how they might already "know" about it. What makes all my stated experiences similar is they all have other memories around them, Disney has the movies and ads and memories, Lionsgate has the movies and my preconceived ideas of "the biz," and baseball has my childhood. So if I can come up with something that means something very personal to me but other people can also find ways to relate to that would be my biggest accomplishment. I would love if it could be a marriage of conscious and subconscious thought going into and out of my media, but that can only be seen once it is made.