Tito Victoriano
Webmaster
“Creativity isn’t
tied to the end product,” says Tito Victoriano, the College’s
Webmaster. “It’s in the process. It doesn’t really matter what it is
you are creating. The process is the same—the key is to make
something worthwhile at the same time you’re discovering new
things.”
Victoriano should
know. He has been working in information technology at Trinity for
10 years, starting with a temporary position in the summer of 1995,
but prior to that he pursued an almost exhaustive series of careers
that, while seemingly very different from each other, all involved
one key ingredient: creative expression. As for his current work
with computers, he says with a smile, “I just had a knack for it.”
Originally from
southern Chile, Victoriano was a first-year college student planning
to major in either chemical engineering or electronics when he
decided to move to Puerto Rico. There, he enrolled in psychology
classes and studied visual arts before dropping out of school to
learn the art of cabinet making. He played the guitar for fun and
relaxation. It was the late sixties, a time of both self reflection
and social awareness. “I became very interested in the immigrant’s
struggle for acceptance within the dominant, mainstream society.
There’s a need to conform, especially when one feels out of place.
It’s a universal, human phenomenon not tied to any particular place
or people.”
He eventually made
his way to Boston, where he found work in a small shop building
harpsichords. Throughout these years he continued to develop as a
visual artist. In 1992 he came to Hartford to work for the
Connecticut Commission for the Arts as co-director of the Inner City
Cultural Development program, a National Endowment for the
Arts-funded program that provides training and resources to artists
in Hartford. Within a few years, Victoriano had discovered his
“knack” for computers and come to work at Trinity.
“Like
visual arts, theater, or music, the Web is a mode of communication,”
he says. “It’s the newest way to get thoughts and ideas across. Only
now we use a keyboard and fiber optic cable instead of a canvas or a
musical instrument.” Victoriano says that he stopped painting when
he became involved with computers, opting instead to use graphic
design programs to create art. He has, however, begun to play the
guitar again—returning to his roots to play Andean folk music, the
music of his youth. He plays a nylon string guitar imported from a
small shop in Spain. Of course, he plays without a pick; preferring
to feel the strings beneath his fingers. It is, after all, about the
creative process.
What they’re reading …
Mel McCombie
Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies
Some
readers are serial monogamists; I am the other kind, albeit with a
system. I always have a recorded book in the car (currently, Jeffrey
Eugenides’s brilliant Middlesex); a print fiction book going
(just finished Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America); and a
print non-fiction.
Roth’s book held me riveted. What if isolationist Hitler-admirer
Charles A. Lindbergh had been elected president in 1940 instead of
FDR? But rather than sensationalize the account, Roth uses the voice
of 7 to 9 year-old Philip, whose political observations are framed
by the quotidian—breakfast, irritating friends, childhood fears, and
stamp collecting. The author adds a retrospective narrative from
time to time to inform us about what happened, but the gravity and
power of the book stems from growingly insightful observations of
young Philip as he discovers the perils of being Jewish in the
transformed country. Between the unassuming narrative of the boy
Philip and the impossible-to-ignore analogies with contemporary
events, this book rocks.
The Plot Against America makes a great
counterpoint to Middlesex. Both describe forms of
“otherness”; characters like FDR and Henry Ford populate both and
both are in the voice of a young narrator. The unabridged version
I’m listening to is read by actor Kristoffer Tabori and his gift
with voices and accents makes it even richer. The book is putatively
about a child who is born a form of hermaphrodite, but it is really
an historical novel featuring 1920s Turkey, Henry Ford’s Detroit,
the Great Depression, and hippie-era San Francisco with ongoing
meditations on gender and ethnicity. Lest you wonder, the book is
rollicking, funny, and Dickensian in scope.
The
non-fiction I’m reading now is Redmond O’Hanlon’s Trawler, an
account of the adventure journalist’s time on a fishing trawler
working the North Seas in hurricane-force winds. Strange deepwater
creatures are pulled up, manic behavior owing to sleep deprivation
stalks the crew, and life and death chase every decision. O’Hanlon’s
over-the-top prose and ear for accents can make it heavy sledding,
but it’s so evocative, I’m practically seasick!
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