So for my senior project I’ve decided to do a 1-3 minute long motion piece about Women & Technology, specifically addressing why women are still avoiding the industry for the most part, why this is a problem, and what we can do about it. I’m pretty excited about it since it combines a lot of my interests: sociology, gender issues, technology, and of course motion.
Research
I’ve been doing a lot of research, talking to people, reading research studies, blogs, forums, and comments. I think reading the comments and forum posts are pretty revealing and enlightening. It’s suprising how many people STILL think it doesn’t matter, or the whole “this topic has been talked about to death, I’m so sick of it. So what if women are underrepresented. Survival of the fittest you know” mentality, which comes up fairly frequently across the board. It just seems so weird to me, but maybe it’s cause I think it’s interesting. But I’ve found TONS of research that’s been done about it, so it seems that lots of other people find it interesting as well.
Reduce
I’ve basicly put together my own course reader sized pile of printouts to sift through by the end of the week. I’m actually looking forward to going through all of it, but a littile daunted by the fact that I’m trying to simplify hundreds of pages into a few paragraphs ( just enough content for the 1-3 minute voice over). It’s also a little daunting since I need to make the content awesome from the start since the words and voicover are going to be a BIG part of the project, unlike most projects where people hardly look at the copy. And once I get into animating things I don’t think content can change a whole lot.
Introspective
Doing all the reading has also made me think about my own socialization as well. If I’m actually trying to promote women in technology, why am I in art instead of science/math/tech? I think a large part of it is the fact that people told me I was good at drawing. When I was little, I don’t think I knew my drawings were particularly good, I thought everyone drew the same way. Sometimes I wonder what I would have gone into if people didn’t give me that positive reinforcement when growing up. Or rather, if I didn’t have siblings and cousins to counter act my father’s greatest dreams, of me going into medicine, by telling me to just do what makes me happy. There was a brief period in time when I thought I might actually do it. I’m glad I didn’t, but sometimes I wonder.
The research has also actually made me a lot more interested in the industry as well. While the motion stuff is sexy and my current love, I do find all the things being done in the human computer interaction side of things to be very intriguing. I think the main reason I’m not actively trying to get mad programming skills or anything is the fact that I really think collaborating with other people who are better at different things is a lot more interesting & productive than trying to do everything yourself as a one-person-shop, although it is useful to have some overlap in knowledge base.
Red Universe
Also, this little site is pretty sweet. They are an interactive agency and I think they did a pretty good job sucking me in to spend WAY to long on their site and in this lovely side scrolling environment. I wish there was an entire game in this style.
