Molly - Final Project Proposal

Last week, I had been playing with two different concepts for the final project. I have chosen to pursue a piece other than the one I discussed and mapped out last week.

This project would play with an old family story, a memory nearly lost and now reclaimed and repurposed:

My grandmother would sometimes tell me of one moment of self-discovery. She never saw herself as a beauty; she saw her own daughter’s grace. One picture of my aunt used to hang on my grandmother’s wall — the young woman leaning against a tree trunk. She was jaunty, slim, welcoming. One day, my grandmother was shuffling through old documents and happened upon a photograph of herself in the same pose. Only then, seeing how much she looked like her daughter did she realize her own loveliness

After her recent death, I finally found the photo of my grandmother casually resting on her tree. Now both photos - grandmother and Aunt Barbara - rest on my dresser. I want to construct a project based on these parallel photographs. I have been reticent to approach this project because of the sensitivity of the subject matter (both women very dear to me are now dead) and my desire to honor the subtle complexity of my grandmother’s revelation

Potentials for Interaction:
I am interested in having participants (the class) explore this same revelation. But it is difficult to direct people into recognizing their own loveliness. There are a few options to play with–looking through ‘albums’ and piecing a story together like an investigation; searching and documenting a new tree, third generation of the image; using a performative element to engage people in this act of posing and layering.

Timeline:
Tomorrow, Thursday April 9 - Enact a one-minute version exploring my struggle with the material
Thursday April 16 - Workshop a way to engage participants in a way connected with the concept
Thursday April 23 - Increase the capacity (ie take more images / incorporate audio of storytelling / flesh out the materials) in a way that enhances the user experience.

Challenges
I am most concerned with finding a way to engage the audience in a way that enriches the sraw materials. I have many ideas, but have felt frustrated by not finding one that feels ‘right.’ My goal tomorrow is to gian insight form the class, and hopefully gain some objective distance from the materials that could make me see other angles of / potentials for the interaction.