Tag: Research Journal

Mastering Anxiety

I am in a stage where anxiety is starting to creep up on me. I still feel like the way forward is foggy, I am not sure what direction my story will take. Following this line of thought, I am considering reassessing my take on applying for ethics. I believe it would be valuable for me to conduct a survey of sorts of New Zealanders, asking for information surrounding their perception of Gypsy/Romany culture.

It has come to my attention that there is a faction in New Zealand who consider themselves activists and are seeking greater clarification surrounding Rom rights, especially in regards to those claiming this right when freedom camping.

I also would like to examine symbolism, and what kinds of thoughts come to mind when you ask your every day New Zealander what they associate with Gypsy/Romany culture. I believe that the information gathered from this data will assist me with the curation of images for my animation.

Buzz words and animated practice

Week 1
24/2/2020-1/3/2020

This week marked my first supervision meeting with Greg, and the completion of my first draft of my ethics application. During this meeting we discussed the different options going forward with my ethics consideration and that before my next meeting I will have the first draft of my narrative that will drive my animated documentary forward.

Over the past few weeks, I have spent some time thinking about just what my project will look like. While my main intent is to create a piece that explores the identity of New Zealand Romany, my Master’s focus is a personal journal, and my final animated documentary will reflect this.

An issue that I keep running into is maintaining a narrow path for my research to follow. I naturally want to fly down roads that open the scope up to a PhD level amount of work, so keeping this in mind, I am focusing on 3 to 4 in-depth interview with willing participants of the Romany community.

To reach these participants I will distribute an online survey via survey monkey, in which I will give them the information regarding what my project is about, ask about their connection to being Romany, and if they would be willing to have a discussion with me.

I do not intend to include what they say in my final work, but rather how what I learned has shaped my own thinking.

During the break, I worked on some different animation techniques. I still haven’t come up with the look and feel of my animation, so currently I am still practising. I do really enjoy Chuck Jones’ The Dot and the Line, and how the animation flows easily from one scene to the next. I’ve placed it below so those reading this can see what I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgqUya0kGPA&feature=youtu.be

My own hand-drawn animation isn’t anywhere near as good as Chuck’s, so I will be considering how I can create something like this with my own limited skill.

Below are some of the animations I have been practising with.

Some other ideas I have been playing with is the concept of somehow incorporating traditional Romany art styles, like the painted wagons, or the rag carpets that my own Granny taught me to make. Romany heritage is a hodgepodge of cultures, much like how offcuts from rags and be bought together to create something beautiful.

I need to pick one theme to weave though my narrative, a metaphor of sorts, I’m not quite sure what this will be yet, but this overarching story is starting to take shape in the peripheral.

Below are some ‘buzz’ words that strike a chord with me, are threads I want to keep my mind as I pull my story together.

“Tactile, Rug, patchwork, DNA, Sum of all our parts”