Talk at Goldsmiths Digital Studios

I'll be giving a short talk at the Thursday Club tonight at 6pm. All welcome.

I'll be introducing my work at the arts / technology space Jaaga in Bangalore, and talking about my personal development over that period.

The Thursday Club is an informal meeting space for artists, technologists and academics to discuss current practice. It is hosted at Goldsmiths but is free for anyone to attend and take part in discussions.

Also speaking will be Pk Mital, an artist and researcher based at Goldsmiths.

Posted Monday, 14 March 2011

Presentation Style

I did my first day of the Jaaga residency today!

And at about 7pm I gave a short, hastily-prepared informal presentation of my work and background until now. It's something all resident artists have to do when they start. Its not really something I've done much before, and I wasn't 100% on how to do it.

The people watching were mainly other participants at Jaaga so I asked for feedback immediately afterwards - knowing I may have to give the same presentation again soon, and more publicly this time. I'm glad I asked now as the feedback was very useful.

I talked about my background as an agency programmer, and then talked about music compositions and installation artworks I had produced. It was suggested I could explain this progression, i.e. what were the motivations behind these changes?

I wasn't sure how to frame a tech-heavy background to a non-tech audience. It was suggested I could show a couple of website front-ends as visual aids and talk a little about what what the software did, by reference to software they may be familiar with, like blogger / wordpress.

For the later parts where I play video / media, I had a tendency to play a video and talk over it (!) and then skip onto the next video when I was done, without checking if the audience understood or needed more information. I also only offered scant clues to the context or concept behind each work.

For the last one about video, it was suggested I use the following process:

Talk first about the context and / or concept behind the work, before hitting play
Then play the media to illustrate what resulted from that context
Pause afterwards before continuing to the next project, and try to make people feel comfortable to ask questions

It's funny, the feedback I got seems obvious in hindsight - It's the same things I've thought watching some other people's presentations in the past. But it's somehow a different story when you're standing in front of people and you're not sure what they expect. At the end of the day you have to keep a conversation going which all parties are interested in. And you can do that by expressing a clear narrative, and offering opportunities for feedback into the process.

Looking forward to improving this process next time.