What is the Final Project?
The Final Project is a self-directed arts-research project in the field of experimental capture. You may use the Final Project as an opportunity to revisit, reinvent, or revise a previous project from the semester — or you may pursue a new line of inquiry altogether.
Regardless, we anticipate that you will, using expanded capture techniques, acquire an impression of something in the world, and develop a presentation from this impression which reveals something hidden or immaterial about that thing.
One new dimension of the Final Project we wish you to consider is how your project is framed, contextualized, or platformed. We ask you to answer the question: Where will, does or would your project live? Frame your work. If it is not ready for the public, then answer in the speculative.
Final Project Timeline
Your Final Project is due in the following stages:
- Thursday, 10 November: In-class “round-robin” pod brainstorming
- Tuesday, 22 November: Written proposals due (in the blog)
- Tuesday, 6 December: Project is due, in-class critique (with guests).
- Thursday, 15 December, Noon: Any remaining documentation is due (in the blog).
Project Documentation Deliverables
As usual, you are asked to document your project in a blog post. You will use this documentation to present your project from the lectern in an in-class critique on 12/6. Amendments to this documentation will be accepted until noon on 12/15.
- Create a blog post, titled nickname-final and categorized FinalProject.
- At the top of your blog post, place the title of your project, a one-sentence description, and embed an animated GIF or ‘hero’ image.
- Write about 200 words on the following:
- What IS your project? It may be helpful to discuss the following things separately: the subject you wanted to capture; the system you created to capture it; the nature of the media object you created in order to present the results of your capture process; and the platform you selected to frame it.
- Why is your project interesting? Depending on your project, it may be helpful to discuss: Why were you interested in capturing your particular subject? In what way is your capture system or media object novel? What motivated or inspired you to conduct this investigation? Note that you may need to educate your reader somewhat about your subject, tools, or techniques.
- Frame your work. We ask you to answer the question: Where will, does or would your project live?
- Historicize your work. Include an image of prior or related work by others. Briefly discuss how your work continues (whether technically, or in terms of content) where previous work leaves off.
- Evaluate your work. Where did you succeed, what could be better, what opportunities remain?
- Embed your media object. This is the thing itself, in the best quality you can. If your media object cannot be embedded in a web page (e.g. if it’s an executable application, or a 3D-printed object), please make an embeddable media object to document it, such as a screen-grabbed video recording, still image, or an animated GIF.
- After embedding the media object, narrate the process of creating your project. Here’s the place for your “making-of” section. Include the following supporting materials:
- Write text about how you made/captured the thing
- Include process images: sketches from your notebook, photos of you working on your project, screenshots at intermediate stages, alternate versions of your final object, dead ends you pursued.
- Please include redundant documentation in the form of animated GIFs, which are very durable.
Relationship Between Final Project and the Class Exhibition
On Thursday, December 8th at 4:30pm we will host an ExCap Class Exhibition in the STUDIO. We frame your participation in the ExCap Class Exhibition an an offering to our community. Participating in the Class Exhibition is warmly invited and strongly encouraged — but in terms of your satisfactory completion of the class through a Final Project, you are only required to participate in the in-class critique on 12/6, and submit documentation of your final project before noon on December 15th.
Keep in mind that the project you choose to offer in the Class Exhibition, if any, may be different than your Final Project. The Exhibition is a great opportunity to present interactive projects, video documentation, etc., but the Exhibition may not be the ideal presentation format for all research.