Thesis Saturday is a time when the floor is closed to the 1st years and IMA students, and 107 of us second years give our one minute thesis pitch. Afterwards we break into groups and workshop for a bit before working on our thesis application. All with the reward of cake at the end. The cake is very important.
This was actually not as difficult as I’d feared, thanks in large part to Adaora Udoji’s help in her Talking and Storytelling class. Because of this, it was a matter of breaking my four minute speech (in the previous post) down into a one minute pitch that got my point across clearly. The knowledge that I wasn’t bound to how I want to implement my thesis, or to even keep my thesis, was very helpful. Although, at the moment, I’m pretty solid on my concept, even if the implementation may change.
For winter break, I’m planning on researching ways I can put my ideas into motion, as well as figuring out how I want to gather other’s lived experiences for the narrative of the piece. Overall, I’m really excited about where this could go. My pitch that I gave, is below.
Hello, my name is Kellee, and the idea I want to explore for thesis deals with the experiences black children and young adults have as they learn to navigate their world. Specifically dealing with the talk, police brutality, and situations dealing with authority figures.
This idea came out of a project from the Socially Engaged Art & Digital Practice class, and I’m interested in diving deeper and seeing what I can do with it.
Going forward, I’m looking to explore to building an interactive installation of sorts that allows people to inhabit other’s lived experiences. Realizing that I can’t explain why we should care about other people, and that people can often assume that if they don’t experience situations, they don’t happen, it is my hope that this project will encourage conversation, even if it’s uncomfortable. Hopefully encouraging the user to go learn more about what others experience on a daily basis.