Brief: Engage a diverse audience on the theme of species loss
Performance Team: Amber Lau, Sanjana Dhanakoti, Ana Sousa, Jiayi Zeng
Media Team: Amber Lau, Tonicha Child, Pat Wingyoopongphun, Jason Xiong, Shuyi Xu
Art Team: Riezan Haddad, Masa Planinc, Carol Chen, Kaiyang Wang
This week was very busy week for me because I need to get a lot of work done before the final presentation that is in less than 2 weeks. As I need to manage works from both Performance and News Team, my schedule for the week was completely full.
Team Performance — Review Feedback and Planning
Since we all had a break from this project for two weeks, we decided to look back the comments we got from XR from the last presentation to bring us back to the project again.
From the feedbacks we received last time, we knew we need to contextualise the idea more by performing more variations and “unexpected scenes”. We also need to make use of the the animated characters and create surprising content to play with people’s emotion, as well as rethinking whether the use of masks is necessary because XR tend to be transparent to public.
We also listed out the things we need to discuss and prepare before holding the performance including: route, props, instruments, garland, animal sound, masks, dead animal headshots and more.
Team Performance — Coffin Making
By viewing the to-do-list, we decided to work on the most time consuming/ complicated task first — coffin making, because there were a lot of unknown factors that required us to ask technicians’ opinions, such as use of material (weight, secure), type of paint (long lasting, dry out fast), production time (if laser cut) etc. What’s more was to make sure we can complete with coffin model within the opening hours, so time was also a consideration for us.
When thinking of a funeral, one of the must-have item is a coffin. Our team decided to create a human size coffin for the animal funeral. We thought this would make the performance more realistic, people would easily recognise it is a funeral just from looking at the coffin.
After consulting with the technicians in 3D workshop, we were recommended and given an already used cardboard. Not only the cardboard is big enough for us to create a human size coffin, the weight is holdable as well. Plus using recyclable materials can help minimise waste.
The process of creating a coffin with a cardboard wasn’t hard, we first measured and sketched out the dimension on the cardboard, then asked a technician to help us cut out the bigger pieces with the machine, then used cutters to cut out the coffin shape out. We only spent 1.5 days to finish cutting and sticking the pieces together.
Team Performance — Communication and Responsibility
Throughout the process, one thing I wasn’t impressed with the team was being irresponsible. Aside from not being punctual (which I think is a normal phenomenon to people nowadays), not communicating and responding to others is also a problem.
As our team worked until the workshop closure time, we didn’t get a chance to confirm things before we leave. When I raised the question in the chat group later that night, no one responded. Even when I asked the most basic question about the meeting time for the next day, no one on the team replied me.
From what’ve learnt in the collaborative unit, I know leadership is important especially during passive situation. So instead of blindly waiting for everyone to reply, I proposed a time to meet tomorrow. Yet, people starting to reply with different reasons why they couldn’t arrive on time right before the actual meeting time. Even though we did postpone the time, everyone was still late.
The result ended with me arriving at the workshop alone waiting the others to come, in other words, we were wasting time that shouldn’t be waste. And I wasn’t able to work on the coffin as well because there were some decisions that needs to be made within the group…
As being a team players, everyone should always keep a mind set of the consequences of one’s action. One might thought missing one person is not a big deal to the team, but when everyone does the same, the team wouldn’t work.
Team Performance — Coffin Making (continue)
On the third day, our team continued to work on the coffin. We went to a DIY store and got an elusion paint for painting the coffin.
In case the paint didn’t work out the way we expected, we did some testing with a small piece of cardboard. Once we were satisfied with the outcome, we started to paint on the actual coffin model.
I also filmed the whole painting process and created a time lapse. Looking back, I was amazed how much we’ve accomplished with the model. I wouldn’t have been able to make it if I wasn’t doing it with a team! And I’m glad we were able to finish the model within a week.
Team Performance — Route
Our team had an idea to end our funeral performance in front of a government building. Our plan was to leave our coffin there so as to send a direct message to the staffs.
I searched the nearest council from LCC and found Greater London Council (GLC) and Southwark London Borough Council (SLBC). Comparing both councils, I found that GLC belongs to the upper tier of the local government, and SLBC is the lower tier. But since we weren’t familiar with the government system, we planned to propose both routes to XR and ask for their opinions.
In terms of walking distance, both requires around 20–30mins walk from LCC, so timing wouldn’t be a problem to the performance.
Team Performance — Engage Diverse Audience
In the project brief, we were asked to engage diverse audience on the theme of species loss. And how do we do it?
1. Poster → Students
We designed some posters and pasted in LCC to raise students’ attention about animal extinction and encourage them to join our funeral marching.
2. Funeral marching → Public
When the funeral performance happen, we will engage people on the street as well as mass media (if it success).
3. Coffin at the council → Government
The most important part of the performance is to deliver our message to the discussion maker, in this case, the government. We aim to leave our coffin and other props in front of the council to force the government to face our appeal. Hopefully they would noticed us and eventually address the problem.
Team Performance — Surprising Scenes
1. Animal Cry Sounds
From XR’s comment, they wanted to see more vacations and unexpected content. Our team planned to include some crying animals voice and play it inside the coffin. The reason for that is because we thought the animals were forced to death majority of the times, we wanted to visualise their feelings through sound to let people understand their situation.
2. Animal Last Word
Since we are using animated characters as the theme, we also thought about giving the animals a voice to do their last speech. The tone of the speech could be thankful in a way that also include sarcasm. For example: Simba thanking his parents giving him birth, he enjoyed every part of his life but now he has no place to leave, always running for his life to avoid human.
Team Performance — Other Performance Details
In the funeral performance, we would prepare flowers to for participants and public to hold. During the marching, everyone would dress black and sin the hum song along the way. We would also send out representative to hold the animal headshots frame to notify the public we are doing an animal funeral. And before leaving the coffin to the council, we would also placed the flower and garland on top of it as the end of the funeral.
Reflection
Since I work with both Performance and News team, it is easy for me to compare how team works in a more efficient/ effective way, as well as knowing who is more likely to be a team player. By working with different people, I was able to imagine how a workplace would be like.
Group project is like a mini society: The company would hire staffs with different background and skills, but one things that’s hard to judge beforehand is whether that person fits well to the team. One might have very good design skills but lack of team spirit, or a very hardworking person but never listens to others. In situation like this, you can’t really complain about it because there are always many different types of people in the world. Some might work well with you and some might not. In this case, treat it as another learning opportunity to train up your flexibility and adaptability. With more experience, you will be able to handle more weirdly or tough situations.
One of the hardest part I encountered this week was people not showing up and responding. I felt like a lot of the times I had to think of the ideas as well making decisions on my own, but this is not how a team works, especially when I wasn’t sure whether I was making the right decision.. Hopefully next week will be better.
