Portfolio Presentation Reflection

After my presentation on Monday, I felt a bit uneasy as it did not go necessarily how I intended. Reflecting on everything I shared, I neglected much of my research leading up to that moment. In preparation, I essentially wrote down everything I had experimented on thus far and everything I was still planning on doing, whereas I should’ve focused more on the research and the intention behind my goal. The ten minute time frame got to my head way too much and as I was presenting I just pared down to what was fresh on my mind; big mistake. Normally I consider myself a great presenter, which is why this specific moment bothered me so much. After my critiques, I realized how vapidly I painted my idea to the class and lecturers. I know my idea is well developed (not to say it doesn’t need more development) but it just sucks I could describe it well to my peers.

My early processes began with experimenting on screen prints with conductive paint, which is ultimately what lead me to reimagine instrumentation and how I could introduce myself to coding; I neglected this completely in my presentation. On these screen prints, I was messing around with AI art with the idea of recreating memories I possess through this abstract image generator, which was also a key aspect of introducing me to my current topics of discussion, which I too left out completely. I wrote about the goal of enabling neurodivergent stories to be told through the execution of my duvet, I left out the significance of why I chose a duvet, there were many topics I one hundred percent just did not bother to mention because I was so focused on what I needed to do, which I realize now. The critiques I received were mainly research and development related which I completely understood because in that moment I realized how I just did not articulate my mind and my process the way I wish I did. I wrote a slide describing potential problems for my duvet which I think almost undermined and maybe problematicised my work in a way that I did not need to focus or waste time on (seen below). Lots of these problems I was hypothesizing are important and I still think they are relevant to keep in mind moving forward, but compared to my research I did not need to spend time on this. Because my project contains quite a bit of critique on certain sonic aspects and what I believe to be disabled and exclusive languages of work, I needed to focus on why I wanted to deconstruct and reimagine these topics in said presentation. It just sucks because I know I have put in the work and the research to back up my ideas mostly, and I just didn’t get it out correctly. All in all it was a poor presentation which I regret but I know now moving forward a better way I can articulate my process and how I got to this point.

-Theoretical Problems

• My individual experience as a neurodivergent person cannot represent everyone else’s, I cannot cover all neurodivergency as one person in one project. 
• Not a cop-out to learn new processes, just my truth. 
• Too simple? Too minimal in design or in concept? 

-Physical Problems

• Only 11 inputs – only 11 different loops per track 
• EP/Performance is somewhat dependent on the execution of the duvet 
• Biting off more than I can chew 
• Definitely not a functional duvet