”Surf The Web Not The Toll Road” for

Jaime endorses this message, "Say No To The Toll Road"

I chose to explore some of the issues regarding the taking of public parkland (as in the San Onofre State Beach Park in and around the San Mateo Creek), to use for a profit-making toll road, known as The Foothill-South Toll Road (241 south).   I use HTML, Hypertext, and media to create a website that is critical of the overdevelopment, and homogenization of the few open spaces left in Orange County CA.   The totality of this piece involves originally composed music, images, text, video, and hyper links that build a narrative of conscience and preservation, versus greed and irresponsibility.

In the piece, through the traversing of the site, I contrast the benefits (the park itself), of the San Mateo campground, the beach at Trestles, and the San Mateo creek (which happens to be Southern California’s last remaining pristine coastal watershed), against the prospects of the building of a toll road.   The Transportation Corridor Agency (TCA) claims that the reason behind building the “Toll Road” (241) is to provide traffic relief in the area, but at the cost of displacing wildlife, polluting the watershed, directly threatening the world-class surf break at and around Trestles beach (including Uppers, Lowers, Middles, Church and Cottons).

To frame this work I wrote a seventeen-measure composition for soprano voice, baritone voice, flute, tenor sax, trombone, vibraphone, timpani, bass drum, tom-tom, violoncello, and contrabass, to illuminate this website.   Each instrument operates like a solo that is attached to a specific page.   In this composition the tenor sax represents the “Toll Road”. 

As the viewer surfs the site, he/she assemble her/his own personal piece and experience.   The only two pages that are pre-determined are the first page, “Start Map”, and “Main Map”.   Parts can be added up to a certain degree to the viewer’s preference.   Essentially each time could be a different experience and can go on as long as the user likes or when the pause button is depressed.   Each solo is set to loop, and there are opportunities to stack up the same instruments in some cases to create a cannon like effect. (October 25, 2006)

For more information and to find a way to take action here are some added links:

Save Trestles . org

Save Trestles . com

Take Action . you can do it!