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Thank you EVERYONE who reviewed my proposal! Your feed backs are fantastic, and yes I am going to work on the aspects all of you mentioned, especially when it comes to present the topic in the performance.

Memory is a very large question mark in the field of trauma, and I am going to simulate the schedule of memory in terms of how long would an experience comes back when similar objects are triggered, and when it will disappear after it comes back in a sonic distortion and sonic bending forms.

I learned a bunch of cool things about how birds build nests from a book called Bird Nests and Construction Behavior, by Mike Hansell. There are birds that have processes of nest building that include sewing, pop riveting, weaving, knotting, and velcro. They create their nests with different layers — some layers to provide structure, some for insulation — and use their bodies as forms around which to build the nests. A deep youtube rabbit hole shows birds building nests by piling up loose material and then spinning their bodies in it, almost like they’re swimming in it, to form the shape of the nest around themselves.

Here are some quotes from the book that particularly resonated with me:

“An important negative point to make about builders is that they don’t have to be clever to be good at it” (p14)

“But for structures built from the top down there are essentially only two ways that they can be prevented from tearing themselves apart. They must be bound together or the must be stuck together. It is a problem that must be solved by all organisms that build structures in tension” (p19)

I have started building some nests instructed by the birds building nests.

https://first-latency-df1.notion.site/3-21-thoughts-mostly-feelings-3a8c66b371484c8e82200cd4fb755269

https://first-latency-df1.notion.site/3-17-thoughts-4a92a7c8d49e4a84b797a1b69dd4847b

Met with Sarah and reviewed my Thesis Proposal feedback:

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/Proposal-Feedback-182d1b8486ab4914b29c6168b05868cf

We covered all the feedback, and spent the most time on a few topics.

One comment in the feedback was being aware of my “positionality” (new term for me) of being a white, male, American using methods and having inspiration from Eastern religion and cultural practices. Is using the act of meditation in my performances somehow extractive to the Eastern cultures that use meditation much more than Western or Christian culture (which has some form of meditation, but is often described more as reflection or contemplation). I’m so used to meditation (I began in 1996) that I hadn’t thought of it through the same lens as the extractive practice / industry of yoga, where an Indian practitioner can’t get a job at a yoga studio, but an attractive white woman gets it. My Eastern influences began early – my father taught my brother about all the world religions from a young age (his closing prayer to our Sunday lessons who say “Jesus, Moses and Muhammad, Confucius and Krishna, Lao Tsu and Buddha”) and was exposed to a meditation practice at age 19 from friends in the Iowa rave scene who grew up in Fairfield, IA, the location of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation university (MIU, later renamed MUM). But these experiences don’t change the immediate perception that I’m a middle aged white man meditating on a stage with an EEG. It seems like it’s a deep topic with many layers and it’s important that I explore it, even if I don’t come up with a fix or universal answer to the issue of cultural extraction.

We also discussed the NYU IRB and I emailed them after the meeting with a question about do I need a review to do play testing with other classmates and when I cross that threshold for needing a review of my project.

Meeting notes:

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/2023-03-21-4298dab206914f03a9a92f6c074cc495

Writing a blog post now, because other wise I will not do it. I tend to write all my work down on a piece of paper and have to actively keep myself accountable to input my progress with the blogs.

I met with Sarah this morning, and showed her my more cohesive proposal which really highlights my exploration and purpose behind the project. Some of the highlights of my meeting included:

1. “Don’t let knowledge of technology be a barrier”, I wrote that down immediately since it is what I tend to do throughout this program!
2. Figuring how much time to put into each part of my project and condensing the bigger scope even more
3. I will be looking how to do my project in a portable format therefore will be doing a lot of research on mobile museums, or micro museum and pop-up exhibits.

While this is a different route that I expected my thesis to go through I am really excited for the idea of making it small and portable! I am also looking forward to working in a more physical space and getting people’s reactions to the project itself.

My next steps will be for the show and tell to do a prototype which I kind of want to keep as a surprise for now, and am excited to document!

For the fourth group meeting, we talked about our progress. I showed my research and demo code of creature’s morph. Jun and Ada still need to make their concept of thesis more specific. Yueqing showed her 2d animated character. I keep doing my research on artificial life, especially wandering and flocking. Also, I made some simple storyboard and envision different type of presentation for the thesis.

Met with Sarah today and shared my survey questions and the types of responses I received. I’m going to also look into the counter argument to affirmations since they don’t work for everyone. However the website I’m designing will be for self-identified women who want to read the positive self talk from women around the world, and/or want to contribute to it.

The website I want to create will hopefully have an ambient sound playing (like when you get a massage or facial!) and the color scheme is light opacity pink, purple, blue – calming, welcoming, not stark. I’m going to continue to ask more women I know and am also waiting to hear back from a few more. The idea is these personal, encouraging phrases will appear and disappear on the screen.

Also was recommended to document process more in posts and watch previous thesis project videos.

Hi all!

I got an overwhelming number of really beautiful, honest, and encouraging responses. If you are one of them, thank you so much for sharing. These wonderful ladies opened up to me and every single one (so far) uses some sort of positive self talk. The vast majority uses affirmations and find them helpful, but they are uniquely personal to every single person. Almost no affirmation is the same with the exception of “I can do it”, “I release what doesn’t serve me” and “You’ve got this” – but even those are usually followed by different sentences. I find it so much more interesting and personal – affirmations such as ” I don’t need to rush to become ‘successful’. Success is small efforts that grow into the bigger picture”. – they resonate more not only with the person, but also with me. I’ve gotten responses back as well that this positive self talk closer align with the form of “mantras” or another response “Actually what I like to do rather than a positive affirmation is to manifest the day before it begins. So I will say, “I did very well today, it was extremely productive and I succeeded in my tasks” THEN begin the day. It tends to work because you chose to believe you succeeded before beginning.”

I believe that women would really, really benefit from seeing what each other wrote. Not only are the themes so consistent, and similar (it’s amazing and makes me feel less alone in my experiences!), we can really empower another through the connection of our positive self talk – be it mantra, affirmations, meditative thought process “I keep mine really simple, as I find repetition to be a really helpful part of self-affirmation. So I like to keep them short and sweet, so they’re easy to repeat and become meditative! Usually it’ll be something like “you’re okay, you’re fine”, “you know what you’re doing”, “this is great work”, “today is a good day”, etc.”, it can be really encouraging for a variety of reasons.

I think the form of a website is where it’s headed. It’s much more accessible. The option to share your own personal mantras, affirmations, self talk and the option to leave your first name and last initial, and the state you’re in (New York) or the option to stay anonymous for either name or location will help people who are not comfortable disclosing their name feel more safe to share their positive self talk.

To have a better understanding of affirmations, and whether they actually work or not, among other things like how often or not often women experience imposter syndrome, I’ve reached out the the badass women in my life, and asked them 5 questions.

1) Have you ever heard of a positive affirmation?

2) If yes, have you ever tried using one? Why or why not? (If you answered no to 1 you can skip this question)

3) Do you now or have you ever experienced imposter syndrome?

4) What types of things have you read, watched, listened to, or said to yourself that help you through negative thoughts or negative self-talk?

5) Positive affirmations are a form of self-talk aimed at improving self esteem. An example would be: “A girl who does big things cannot let small things get to her.”

Are there positive affirmation(s) that you use in your life? If you’re comfortable with sharing, I’d love to hear them! If not/bonus question: Can you try creating one?

**Feel free to write as little or as much as you want to each question!!** 🙏🏼❤️

The answers have started coming in… To be posted on a separate post!