Show-A-Thing Reflection

It was fun! And really great practice introducing my project and thesis idea to people with different backgrounds and expertise.

I purposely (partly also due to lack of time) didn’t make a PowerPoint presentation for my show-a-thing. However, I did read through the sample slides many times to try to structure the presentation in my head. I chose not to do it because my brain tend to stop functioning if I know there are slides there for me to refer to, and I often end up just start monologuing on and on, following the slides without actively thinking. I thought it would work best if I tried to practice actively revising on the spot how to introduce my project to strangers.

Heidi Brant

Heidi was my first audience early in the morning, and she was energetic and fun to talk to! Just when I was about to sharescreen (not to slideshow but the thesis proposal and other stuff), Heidi stopped me and asked me to practice telling her what my thesis is about completely verbally instead. This reminded me of our second (or third?) thesis class with Sarah, where we all had to talk about our thesis proposal in 1 min. I was pretty nervous, but I somehow made it!

The feedback from Heidi about the project was generally positive, and she totally supported the use of Miro board. She didn’t find it lame (my own word), despite the fact that she also uses the Miro Board on a daily basis. She still found the project interesting. Heidi did ask me to think about what I would want my audience to really take away from this project (if any). My answer to that is this is honestly just self-therapeutic work, and if participants even just grasp a little understanding from my perspective, I would find comfort in it. Heidi also talks about how my project seems like an investigation, a service into people’s subconscious (not unconscious).

An artist reference from Heidi is Douglas Huebler’s “The Secrets” artist book project.

Pierre Depaz

Knowing Pierre’s background in Political Science, I introduced my project more from that lens and felt comfortable diving into the origin and intention of the project, as I knew I didn’t need to over-explained the complicated geopolitical origins of all things. Pierre was great to talk to, and we also spent some time talking about the swastika poll and the reinvention of the public; it turned out Pierre had also done similar projects before. We also talked about the play between public/private space, the digital “self,” and how people react differently when they think they are representing their countries vs just representing themselves.

Project references from Pierre: Citizens Convention for Climate (2019), America in One Room (2019), Please Vote For Me (2007)

Cindy Jeffers

We had some technical difficulties since the meeting happened on Google Meet. The technical issues sort of got me into a chaotic space mentally and made me forget how to introduce my project a little bit. I was a little bit all over the place compared to the last two meetings. But overall, we still had a good time. Cindy was the first (and only, in terms of the people related to the Low Res program I’ve talked to about my project), that has not seen Miro Board before. When I showed her the prototype, it seemed the technology itself interested her a lot. She totally agrees this should be used as a broader polling tool before every meeting (which is common in many workplaces already, I assume). She agrees with my fascination that one is able to see voting live with the mouse cursor moving around but also stays anonymous. Cindy was the only person I picked who I didn’t find the background knowledge too related to my own project, so I wonder if the presumption made my explanation of the project difficult or if it really is difficult when presenting to someone who is outside your knowledge bubble. Anyway, it helps me think about how I will have to introduce this thesis project outside the Low Res community.

Monika Lin

It was great meeting with Monika again since we last talked in Fall, and I felt like this conversation was really helpful. Since she knew a little bit of my background from last semester, I was able to talk more about the concerns and problems I’m having with the meaning of the thesis. Monika really enjoyed the Miro Board but also recommended the questions need to go deeper with extended sections. I showed her I was actually working on it, but it’s actually a difficult task to figure out the right balance to ask a question that has the right enough discomfort that I don’t turn off the conversation at all. As Monika put it, it’s like cooking the lobster. The second layer of the questions is an art I have to learn to master in order to make the poll works as well as I wish. I also asked about Monika’s personal experience as an artist working in China and whether she’d encountered censorship. The answer is ALWAYS. I won’t give out the details here, but it’s a constant struggle with a lot of internal conflicts for sure. Anyway, we had a lot of fun chatting.

YG Zhang

My meeting with YG was the last one of the day. Since I know YG also speaks Mandarin,  I was at first wondering if I could try to introduce my thesis project in Mandarin, but I completely failed and switched back to English. My Mandarin is definitely way more fluent than my English, but somehow when it comes to introducing sensitive or personal artworks and projects, I couldn’t do it in my native tongue as I felt exposed, naked almost. Perhaps I was too nervous, and knowing YG didn’t know anything about me, I went in-depth talking about the swastika poll project. I felt like I actually did a really good job talking about the project this time around, no more misguiding, and it helped him understand more about what I’m trying to do in the thesis project. YG’s main questions were also on what’s the motivation behind it and what I wanted the general audience to get away from this experiment.