Fall Portfolio Project Brief
Following the completion of your Lived Research project and report, it is time to launch into the creation of your fall portfolio project. You will have 10 weeks this fall to create an experiential design piece rooted in your personal artistic vision and interests. What inquiries have you been orbiting through your work, both in and outside the program? What experiences, topics, and perspectives hold gravity for you narratively? thematically? What forms are you drawn to utilize to craft an experience of this? Your Lived Research is an undeniably rich resource and starting point for this project, though you are not obligated to utilize the inquiry and material you gathered in any particular way. This is an opportunity for you to lean all the way into what you are most passionate about. Each of you entered this program hoping to revolutionize or shift or expand your respective disciplines. How can this project alter the way audiences understand experience design?
Given the rapid pace of our fall session, it is crucial that you enter with an idea that is already well-formulated. When classes resume on September 6th, you will give a Pechakucha-style presentation (20 slides, 20 seconds each) on your Lived Research project findings and outline the project you are proposing to complete in fall. You will have two opportunities to showcase this work: online for a critique with your cohort and in-person to the public and invited critics during our final weekend together in New York City. We anticipate that many of you will continue to develop and extend this project beyond the completion of the program and expect that your final presentations will present polished work that can be expanded. With this in mind, we invite you to be careful considering the scope of your proposal. Bigger is not necessarily better. Think about what you can create that is complete and well-crafted. It may someday be part of something bigger, but what you present in November must be complete in itself. This is not to be a collaborative project, though you may employ assistants for parts (ie actors, docents, tech support). If you would like an exception to this, it must be approved by the Program Directors.
Final Projects have three elements:
A direct or remote experience shared with our Guest Critics, staggered over two days:
Tuesday cohort Oct 22 & 29
Wednesday cohort Oct 23 & 30A portfolio of multimedia materials that communicate the essence of the project, including 10-15 visual assets (photographs, scripts, diagrams, documentation, etc), a project description, and an artist statement. Portions of this will be used to make printed material for the final presentation in New York.
A presentation in New York on Sunday, November 24th. There will be open hours for the invited public as well as closed hours with Guest Critics. On Nov 22 you will install, Nov 23 you will have a dress rehearsal and the opportunity to experience each other’s work, and on Nov 25th you will de-install/strike. Your presentation on November 24 will consist of either:
A scheduled presentation or performance that is live. You have up to 15-30 minutes to present, depending on how many others choose live options. (EX: The Pool Vol 1 by Megan Livingston, a 30 minute performance with 10 participants and audience; The Lost Sock Rescue Society by Christine Lesiak, a 20 minute performance for a large audience; The Dunksy by Eugene Ashton-Gonzalez: a 20-min presentation about an immersive transgressive placemaking experience he led 6 audiences through in San Francisco)
-or-
An installation, booth, or tabletop display to share your project in the format that feels best suited to your work; this should be an experiential offering that invites people to engage with your work directly. Students utilized a variety of structures for this in the past:
an installation to be freely engaged with as visitors browse for an open ended amount of time (The Grief Suitcase by Taouba Khelifa, The Lost Sock Rescue Society by Christine Lesiak)
a scheduled experience within an installation with time slots (Vaulting by Tracy Smith: 4 people every 15 minutes; Lover House by Mel Bieler: 1 person every 30 minutes)
a game with a set time frame and number of players offered on rotation (Happy Families by Natalie Silk: 1 hour, 4-6 players; Traverse by Amy Segreti: 45 minutes, 2 players)
a piece of technology to peruse and play with (Experience Passport by Brice Lemke, Terrence Vessey’s Signals from the Static by Jerome Morrison)
a launchpad for a site-specific experience outside of the exhibition (Vestige by Aaron Matys: 15 minute audio experience beginning at the Irish Hunger Memorial, 10 minute walk from Gibney)
Suggested Parameters/Containers to consider (though of course, you may break the rules)
What is a reasonable duration for your piece? A walking tour might be 15 minutes; a game might be played for an hour; an immersive theater with dialogue and costumes might be 20 minutes; an educational experience might be 15 weeks. If your experience will be longer than 15 minutes, consider how to represent this at a table because it won’t be experienced live during the final weekend.
What is your ideal audience size? Creating an intimate one-on-one experience will have a different scope than an immersive installation that has a capacity for 75 people.
What spatial frames will help you determine the experience you’re crafting? What locations and sites will you physically move within? What digital or virtual platforms create a frame for an online experience?
For the final project, there are three types of deliverable structures. Your final project has a wide latitude, must engage the principles of experience design as we have explored them over the course of the program, and must be complete and documented by the time of our final presentation in November in New York. You may create:
A site-specific project taking place outside of New York City. This type of project may be time-based or not, and must be well-documented so that the instructors and the cohort may have a comprehensive understanding of the project without participating in it. At the final presentation in New York, you may present documentation of this work at a table and/or in a TED-talk style presentation.
A remote experience that may be experienced digitally. For such a project, you should be prepared for visitors to experience all or part of the project at a table during our open hours in New York.
A live, time-based, or installation work that may be experienced during the November presentations. This must be arranged in advance with us. During open hours, we will schedule such works so that they can be experienced by multiple visitors, depending upon the parameters of such an experience and the number of students who wish to present live work. More than one live project may be happening at the same time. You may elect to have an ongoing experience live at your table. We will work with you to determine the final presentation schedule.