Wednesday, November 16, 2011

A Week Later

     It has been a while since I last posted, and almost a full week since I presented my Festival of Spectacle. We had to include all four sections of the class into the presentation, visualization, performance, ideation, and sound. A whole two in half months have passed since we learned that we had to work on this project.  Since it is the first year for the class, the directions for the project were a little vague, but I think that left it open for all the dimensions in our creativity. So here's what my project turned out to be.
     I worked by myself and tried to get into character for my performance. I worked really long on the project because I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to draw emotion from the viewers. I know that is asking for a lot, but I really wanted to grasp that idea and use it. So I was a boy who wrote words down on a paper (that I drew before this). However, I started by looking into a "mirror"(an outline of my body that I drew pictures in for visualization). I held up signs that said. Dear Mom, I hate you for making me doubt myself, for not accepting who I am.
     Then I ended up screaming into a pillow after not being able to put together my tie. Then I tied my other tie and went to a small prop I set down in to the middle of the floor. That's when you see that it is a funeral for my mother. After that I used black letters to spell out "I forgive you". I know it doesn't sound as good when I am writing it, but I really tried to pull something real out of the experience.
     At the end, I wore a t-shirt that said I support same sex marriage and I had a rainbow flag. I guess you can connect the dots. I really enjoyed this, but I am really nervous about what is going to happen next, especially since technology is involved (I am so bad with technology).
     Wish me luck...

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Oral Presentation

     For some reason, I find that making a presentation in front of people challenges me to break out of my shell. I don't know what it is, but there is some fear in the back of my mind that is always there that I am coming off as insincere or too nervous, which I probably am. It annoys me. 
     The other day in my Dimensions in Creativity class. Previously, we drew some pictures on paper. In this class, we had to use most, if not all, of the pictures that everyone had drawn. They were supposed to follow the theme of good and bad self, but even with that everyone had a very different take on the theme, which made it difficult to mix all of them into a story to present to the class.
     Being who I am, I was way to nervous to go first or even in the middle. I ended up going next to last. In my story, Baby (the overweight protagonist) deals with the repercussions of her mother's consistent complaints about her weight. They have caused her to doubt her own self-image and she hates herself for this. I don't know if this idea was inspired from something else or not. I don't know.
     Some of the illustrations included, turtles, cakes, a hitler stash, ying yang symbol, and temptation. I tried to go about the story with a more abstract idea. Some people described the relationship of the turtle throughout their tale, while others went with the characters drawn on them.
     I really loved the way that we all made our own stories with it and went in almost complete different directions than others in the class. Yes, the images we had to use were the same, but at the same time all of our perceptions towards those images were different in some ways or another.
     For example, their was one picture that had a heart and star figures in in. Someone used them as Gods in their stories, while others used them differently. I used the image by saying Baby carried her "heart on her sleeve". I tried to use the images in other pictures more abstractly as well. I think that is why I really enjoyed the assignment so much, even if I was really nervous when I found out we had to make up a story in front of people (Even though, in our subconscious we were thinking of ideas in some ways or another.) I found it really interesting, yet challenging.
     Ultimately, this oral presentation gave me the idea I am going to use in my Festival of Spectacles. I will explain this in my next blog post, so stay tuned. <3