By Zephaniah Malka

I am incredibly excited to share the process and result of my research in the upcoming President’s Showcase this fall. Along with displaying the results of my project, I will also be doing an oral presentation with an accompanying powerpoint to explain my experience conducting my preliminary research. I plan to expand on what originally inspired me to pursue this topic and it’s personal significance. As my project is art-based, much of my process will be displayed in the form of storyboards and sketches. I will be explaining how I condensed the work of Salomon both visually and story-wise, showing both the difficulties and successes along the way. I will also be showing images of creating my stop motion animations behind the scenes, showing how I hand-make my scenes. I will also be emphasizing how integral my travel was in conducting my research effectively. Studying Salomon’s work in person was essential to accurately honoring her powerful art and story. The exhibitions throughout the Joods Museum also contributed heavily to my understanding of her circumstances and I am excited to highlight the work of its incredibly curators.

Another important element of my presentation will be discussing my experience publishing my work online and the public response. Ultimately, I hope that my oral presentation will communicate how essential art is in generating empathy. My experience conducting my preliminary research was incredibly eye-opening and solidified my belief in this idea more than ever. I hope that comes through to the audience in this portion of my display at the showcase. My oral presentation is meant to focus on the process of conducting my research, so the final results of my research will be displayed separately.

My resulting work is video-based which means I cannot exhibit it in a typical poster format. Instead, I plan on using a laptop with a connected monitor to play my animations on a loop beside me. In order to make my work more accessible to the audience I will be adding subtitles to my videos. The presentation space will be somewhat noisy with my peers presenting their work simultaneously so these subtitles will be important in understanding the storyline I am narrating. I will also be orally explaining my work as the audience passes through, and I want to be sure I am still intelligible and not competing with the volume of my videos. Although I am certainly nervous for my presentation, my excitement to share my work gets me past the anxiety- and I am even more excited to see the results of the incredible research conducted by my peers.