Monday, February 6, 2012

New Genres Projects

Project #1
My personal journey


We as a group decided that we wanted to do something that couldn’t be done here on campus. So from there we thought about the words on the project outline: time, space, and the human presence. It hit me and steph that a continuation of her senior seminar project fit those words all too perfectly. When Melissa saw her photos she agreed that it was perfect. We thought about what we could do as zombies that would bring to life the realization that we dwell on death all too much and that we as humans tend to do the same things day in and day out with conveying emotion. Then from there we decided on a location. A GROCERY STORE. From there we had to choose someone that could keep a straight face while getting quite close to a stranger and never breaking character. That was how I landed with the job. I knew that it was going to be hard to break out of my normal character and get as close as I could to a person in a situation in which you often don’t get supper close.
My first task in this group project was to a test run. I was kind of nervous to do this dressed as me and not as the soon to be “zombie marie.” However after I got to the store I discovered that it was not as hard to take on this persona of being in someone else's special bubble. It was most definitely uncomfortable and people were rather rude or looked at me like I was some complete moron. I ended up only doing a few people because I was way out of my comfort zone. After I left the store I was feeling pretty confident about my experience and was interested to see the difference in my experience as a zombie.
Our second task was to record how I felt while doing my test run. Which is where my partners learned of my personal experience and how I felt. They reassured me that I could do this. Then we sat down and thought about which store we were going to use. We couldn’t do Walmart because too many weird people go there that already violate your space and make you stop and stare. We finally decided on Foodlion.
Zombie time! Task Three was to turn me into the walking dead and head to the store. We had to make a pit stop at the doctor’s office for steph eye appointment. While there we decided that we should do a test run. We decided that it would be great because the people in the room had nothing to stare at or to distract themselves from me. This actually turned out to be more uncomfortable than the grocery store. Do in part that I too was trapped in this room. I felt more aware of the stares and how uncomfortable I was making the people I was sitting across from. From there we went to Foodlion. It was not quite enough people so after I did my thing we headed to Harris Teeter’s to do another run. This time we found lots of people for me to get close. We spent about 45 minutes at each store if not longer. We did not have a set time. It was just until I felt like I was done or we ran out of people.
Finally, task four. Put it all together. We then sat down and I did a testimonial on how I felt the second time through. Along with My testimonial Melissa and Steph also described how they felt during the process and what they saw.

Observation #1: People act out more around normal people than they do when you are dressed out of the normal or act in an un-normal manner. When I was dressed like I would on any other day people were not afraid to give me weird looks, ask me what I was doing, or just plain run away from me. But when I was dressed like a zombie and walked like one too people were polite. They moved out of the way, they said sorry and over all tried not to stare at me. I have decided that people do not want to act un-normal around un-normal people because it is considered rude, but if you act un-normal and look normal people are not afraid to be on guard. 

Observation #2: When you stop thinking about your self and start paying attention to the world around you, things come into the clear. My first run through I was to concentrated on how I was feeling and not as much on how others were acting around me. The first few people I stood next to were a blur, I was too consumed in my own inner thoughts. As i got my head straight I was more aware of how they acted. Then on round two I was barely thinking about how I felt and was more concentrated on my surroundings and how others were acting. It was definitely an eye opening experience.

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