Tabula-rasa Art Piece & Communication (Animation Context 6)

 

For the last week of Animation Context we were given the task to create a piece of art based on the word we did the presentation for – mine being Tabula rasa. The above picture shows that piece. I made it out of Plasticine and it shows a human brain on the front of a blank Tabula (or slate) with a question mark just to help get the idea across. The idea behind this work was directly correlated with the definition of the word – that the mind is born without in-built knowledge – metaphorically a ‘blank-slate’. I took this quite literally and decided to correlate the brain to the slate directly. I made it out of Plasticine to experiment with my abilities and to show something physical in a 3D space instead of being limited on paper.

Overall I could be happier with my ‘art’. It’s messy and lacks detail. I feel that I could have done better. Plasticine is still new to me so my abilities are severely limited with it – I wish I had perhaps chosen something simpler that I was familiar with so I could fully show off my full abilities. At the same time however I feel that I did communicate what I wanted with the piece and that it’s effective enough on its own right. If I’m given a similar task to this again I may explore others methods of recording art and perhaps find the one which works best for me. That may end up just becoming drawing.

The rest of the lesson was spent on communication and how to improve it. I found this extremely helpful as it’s the first in-depth lesson on this subject I’ve been given. Last weeks presentation wasn’t the first I’ve ever done, but all the previous ones have always felt like drowning as I wasn’t quite sure of what I was doing besides some ‘pointers’ that teachers had given me in the past. It was interesting delving into how the human mind actually works, how it retains information and how much (7+-2), how to structure a presentation (horor vacui, only 3/4 words, beginning, middle and end) and so on. It really taught me a lot and for the first time ever I feel like I could finally be getting a grip on presentations.

One key part that stood out to me was a short video on the 7 C’s of communications. Those being:

Clear

Concise

Concrete

Correct

Coherent

Complete

Courteous

The video explains each point in more detail, but overall I found this extremely helpful. A piece of advice I was given – ‘find a structure’ – applies to this. With 7 clear areas to focus my attention on when communicating it gives me a checklist. If I can confidently say that I tick all 7 boxes then I know I’m communicating effectively. Without these guidelines it would still feel like I’m ‘winging’ it, and that’s never a good thing. I plan on implementing this tool in any situation where communication is important to make sure I’m meeting the guidelines of effective communication to deliver the best performance possible whether that’s a presentation or anything else.

I couldn’t have asked more of the lesson. It was informative and comforting in a way to hear the experiences Johny had been through with presenting and how he overcame challenges. His stories provide a foundation for where I can start to overcome the anxieties I have about standing in front of a crowd. I plan on using many of the techniques given from Johny to help build my confidence, and I’m seriously considering doing the Iron-Man. Hopefully with some times counting the sleeps and building myself up when it comes to the next presentation I’ll ace it. I want to overcome this challenge so I can quickly move on to whatever comes next.

Mind Map for Art Ideas