Did not spend much time preparing for the presentation. I guess I was afraid to give a misleading account of what I am trying to achieve by showing underdeveloped work.
I wanted to speak for my work since I did not feel it is was able to speak for itself.
What this of course means is that I am too protective of my work, and I need to start spending serious efforts designing something that I feel comfortable with as a representation of my project.
There is no point doing an M.A unless I am prepared to take risks and show work in development sometimes, since I might as well be making work alone if I do not.
I regret not preparing some better examples of my practical work, since I have missed an opportunity to have some valuable feedback.
Having said that I have been giving some importance to conceptual problems and ideas and these form the foundation of what I am attempting. As this was my first presentation to my new class it was important for me that I should enforce an understanding of what I am trying to address and what my greater motivations are.
I feel my presentation was fairly successful in this respect, and I believe that due to this when I finally do present work in progress, I can take comfort that the background contextualization/ conceptualization had been provided already.
In general I found the presentation difficult, not having much confidence in my work, my strategy was to turn up and try to do something spontaneous. In some respects this approach backfired.
Yet as a learning experience it was very valuable.
So what did I learn?
Firstly I learnt that I am not as good at public speaking as I imagined myself to be, apart from this I learnt that while I might be capable of communicating some complex ideas and problems, I am not fully capable of holding an audience’s attention while doing so, again this is where focal points are useful. Apart from a presentational context, I feel I did learn some things about my project and the direction it needs to take.
These were:
I want the technology in my installation to perform dysfunction, yet my overall design and the program and technology I employ, all have to function very well for this to be achievable.
//Examples of paradoxical logic such as this are always greatly interesting to me as an art student.
There needs to be a strong sense of symbolism in my images. I intend to appropriate what are core, one might even say archaic, symbols from mythologies, theology, superstitions, and folk laws.
//This process interests me because it recognizes both – the iconoclastic nature of how culture and cultural belief systems evolve and the cut and paste ideal that is championed across the New Media Environment. This process is also interesting because it sets a stage upon which to appreciate technology it’s self in a symbolic sense.
The suggestion of unpredictability (which I may have confused with the concept of randomness during my presentation) could extend from programing and maybe create some kind of fatalistic/superstitious engagement with my installation.
Cracks within and gaps between screens are a deprogrammed, democratic space where forms and meanings might be reMembered
In general the process of delivering a presentation and the thinking period directly after it has been motivating and I feel my ideas have taken a stronger grounding and that a plan of action has been kick started through this presentation.
On a more practical level it was suggested that pure data might be a good environment in which to design my interface.
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