Thesis Writing, URLs, and Spring Break
Spring Break is nearly over now.
I dropped ~$150 on the metallic acrylic, and because I couldn’t order samples ahead of time, I’m holding my breath that they’re quality.
I just met with Allie for more writing advice. My Methodology section is a jumbled mess, too in-depth in some parts and lacking in others. Allie tells me that I have the opposite problem of most students: having too much to say, too much research, too much work. The trick is in figuring out a concise structural way to tell it all so that the reader doesn’t get lost.
Allie’s advice is to make a reverse outline– reverse engineer the outline of what I’ve written so far, warts and all, and then write what my ideal outline would be. That is my homework for next Friday.
Allie tells me that, unlike other theses, my thesis is part of my work. It wants to be seen and shared. I told her that I was inspired by Jenny Odell’s thesis-length article How to do Nothing.
So, as an extra bit of homework: See if I can’t make a one page outline of How to do Nothing. Allie tells me that making outlines of the works you admire can help you understand how to do the same for your own writing. I knew this, from creative writing class and from outlining a Radiolab story for my linguistics book– but forgot about it.
Some lessons you just need to relearn again and again.
We live in a very audio/visual time, where videos seem to be the ideal mode to communicate brief pitches about complex subjects. I’m inspired a lot by Tom Scott’s short site-specific informational videos about “things you might not have known,” like this one about one place in Europe without street names.
Thanks to a grant from ArtsEngine, I have been connected with videographer/photographer Dylan Hancook. ArtsEngine hopes to document my process and project.
From looking at previous ArtsEngine IP grant recipients, it seems as though the final product might be a video of me speaking about my work in my studio, mixed with some footage of the artwork itself. Nothing wrong with that.
However, a visiting expert recommended I conduct a guided walking tour that people could sign up for in the gallery. If I were to do this in April, I'd need someone to document the tour.
However, if that idea proves to be too arduous, I had another idea: for each of the ~7 featured plaque locations, I could create 30 sec ~ 120 sec video vignettes where I could speak about the existing plaques and my approach towards making my own. Imagine these videos on a site where you could take a digital tour of these sites?
This, of course, is something I'd only seriously consider after having made all the plaques– sometime in April when the exhibit is up and all I've left to do is finish writing my thesis. This would be a video extension of my written thesis, a day project easily achievable after I've written everything. I could do this all on my own, but it would help to have an experienced videographer and extra pair of hands to help me hit all the spots on a beautiful day, when I've written about each plaque, prepared to give the elevator pitch for why each of these plaques are compelling. These videos would work without the website.
I bought a URL for a year! I’m surprised no one bought it before.
There is a lot of this that I just plain havent done. And my brother is coming into town in a few hours, and I don’t think I’ll have any time left this break to work on writing/designing plaques. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t find the time to get that done. But then again, it’s spring break, and I had other fun to have with my parents and with friends, as well as two meetings. So I’m not being hard on myself about it.
It’s so beautiful outside, this whole week. I’m just enjoying it.
