Recently I was a part of the PLP winter exhibition. An exhibition is an event where we showcase some of our learning and thought process while in PLP. For this exhibition we had to create a box using a theme statement from the movie Avatar.
Brainstorming:
The beginning of creating our box required us to find all of the different themes reflected in Avatar. Some of the different themes included Racism, Human vs Nature and Militarism. I chose racism as my theme and used its purpose in Avatar to create a theme statement. My theme statement was “Appearances are not the important aspect of a person, personality and thoughts are what differentiates a person”. I loosely based my statement around the moral “ Don’t judge a book by its cover” which became the inspiration for my entire project. I choose this as my statement because I felt like it reflected on the assumptions and judgements that the Humans and the Na’Vi made about each other without actually understanding or knowing each others morals or motives.
Launch Journal:
To create a better understanding for the idea behind the box we had to use a Launch Journal. A Launch Journal is used to follow the 6 steps for launching a project to an audience and making sure it’s ready. The L stands for Look, Listen and Learn. The goal with this step to gain an understanding of what the purpose of the project is. The A stands for Ask tons of questions. The goal of asking questions is so that we can sharing our wonders and have them answered to further our learning and understanding. The U stands for Understand the problem or process. The purpose of this is to research and engage in learning and discovery. The N stands for Navigate ideas. The purpose of this was to apply all of our knowledge then analyze and combine it. Next was the C which was to Create a prototype. We were supposed to take our ideas and draw out what we wanted to create and all the materials we would need to make the actual box. The final letter is H and it stands for Highlight and Fix. We were paired into groups where we had to give out critiques and positive notes on our team members boxes.
Creation:
My idea for my box was based around the moral “ Don’t judge a book by its cover”. Considering neither the Humans or Na’vi followed that moral I tried to represent that by using an actual book to write on top all of the insults and assumptions each group made of each other. I tried to represent each group by separating the book down the middle and paint one side blue and the other side white. I wrote the judgements made of the Na’vi on the blue side and the assumptions made of the Humans on the white side. I realized that I had to actually make a box so after spending way too much time brainstorming I decided on creating a box to go underneath the book. I wanted to decorate the box to create contrast and a story when compared to the book on top. I chose to use a wall to divide the box in half to create each group side. I spent a couple days working on perfecting the interior of my box. I created a forest for the Na’vi side of my box to represent how much they try to protect the forest and the deep spiritual connection to the tree they have. Meanwhile on the Humans side I used Monopoly money stacks and military figurines to show how the Humans are willing to use their militaries power to force everyone into their bidding just for more money.
Presentation:
For my presentation my main goal was to effectively present my box without spoiling too much of the movie. I knew that their would be people who would be inspired to watch the movie or curious about the references that we were using in our boxes. In my presentation I tried to use different references that people could understand without needing to watch the movie to understand. I tried my best to connect either side of my box to something that it happening in the real world. For the Na’vi talked about their connection to nature and how they wanted to protect it and how that may be connected to the beliefs of some of the Indigenous. For the Humans I talked about the manipulation of greed and the struggle for more power and how this connects to how humans are constantly fighting to gain more power over others without thinking of the consequences on others.
Room Decoration:
My box’s theme was racism so I got added to the white room. It was supposed to be contrast to the other room in the library, which was the blue room. Although the day of the exhibition we changed the room to human room. I found decorating our room to be difficult because we had such a large space to decorate. But my group also worked together to move all the furniture and to try and decorate our room to transform it. I felt as though we put in a lot of effort to transform the room and I had fun working with my team to accomplish the different tasks.
Reflection:
Looking back on my different methods to accomplish work, I would have to say their are a couple things I would change and that I would keep doing. To change, I have a couple things I look back on. To start off I wish that I could have helped with my room more. I did help with the set up but I feel as though I could have contributed more items to help improve the rooms. In the future I know now that I should add in more help outside of the school hours. I would also work on finishing my box earlier so that I have more time to prepare my speech and find new details to add to make it exceed my extremely high expectations for it. In contrast I am quite proud of some of the methods I used to create and complete my finished box. I feel that I gained an early understanding of the project which helped drastically with creating a plan and a prototype for my box. I was able to plan and create with time to spare, which I then used to spend a lot of time on adding lights and moss. I know that I got to caught up with adding some major details that I neglected fine-tuning the smaller details. However I am quite proud of the speech I used to present my box. One of my reasons to join PLP is because I know it would force me to step out of my comfort zone and to work on building my confidence and public speaking skills. Looking back on my entire process and the steps I took to accomplish my goals I have some final observations. Although I got and early start and was quite ahead I feel like iI slowed myself down by trying to make everything perfect. I also know that I created a very thorough plan and created a box that I am quite proud of.
I think the important lesson that I will be using to further my learning in future exhibitions is that I will not get so caught up in some sections that are already working well and focus more on fine-tuning the smaller, more important details.