Pictoplasma '24 II
I was lucky enough to be screening UPUP as part of the festival. It’s interesting to me that what I feel is one of my weaker films has had a half decent screening run, but that’s beside the point.The screening seemed to go well; the work felt well received and the response was good.
As well as screening, I gave a brief talk on my research to a room full of creative practitioners. I thought this would be a good opportunity to get across some of the research ideas to an audience comprised of artistic practitioners, rather than academics or researchers - especially as so much of the conference seemed to revolve, purposefully or otherwise, around play.
The talk was part of a Pecha Kucha (“chit-chat” in Japanese) event, a really exciting and fun way of presenting work - 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide (6 min 40 secs in total), and a continuous timer. So, in effect, you have no control over when the slides change - you just have 20 seconds per slide and just have to keep going no matter what. This style of presentation is highly popular and has something of a cult following. But it also has many advantages over more traditional lectures or presentations, not least of all because its limited time forces the presenter to be “straight and to the point” (Solusia, Kher and Rati 2019). I figured this would give me a good excuse to try and condense my ideas down and engage a practitioner audience. I also used it as an excuse to gather some data, asking the audience to fill in a brief survey about the talk and their own practices.
Pecha Kucha also provides a useful context for my research - it’s fun! Both for practitioners and the audience. From my experience as an audience member, assuming the presenter is engaging, you find yourself very quickly rooting for them - 20 seconds isn’t long, and it’s easy to fall behind. This also means the presentation moves along at quite a clip, keeping the audience attention. All of this means that the context for discussing complicated subjects is set by the presentation style - the audiences is primed to be entertained, and I have to simplify my ideas down into a very limited window.
All the speakers in my event came with different styles of presenting - different ways of engaging physically and verbally with the audience, and different styles of slides. My talk was last, both a blessing and a curse - the audience would have been familiar with the format by the final speaker, but potentially ready to leave the event. I believe I delivered my talk well, with many people afterwards commenting on the professional but engaging and entertaining energy I brought to the subject matter. (Incidentally, this did highlight a key issue that definitely needs exploring, if not in this research then in my pedagogical practice - that many artists have beautiful, wonderful work, and can talk about it one-on-one, but struggle to create an effective, engaging, entertaining public talk).
Responses to the survey, though, were insightful. 35 members of the audience responded, with the vast majority describing themselves as non-animation creative professionals. The overwhelming majority had never heard of plork before. Interestingly, nearly half of respondents describe regularly thinking about playfulness as part of their practice; but 2/3rds of the respondents don’t have an active reflective practice (i.e. one that is written or drawn rather than mental reflection). 26 respondents felt they were more likely to think about “play/playfulness/plork” after the talk. When asked optionally whether there was anything else they had taken away from the talk, several respondents mentioned a “want to play more” but that “sometimes it feels hard to get in the mindset”. One respondent mentioned missing “having joy” in their work; two respondents mentioned versions of wanting more of a “how-to” for becoming or being more playful.
This last point is a common thread in workshops and talks I have done - that more people want more of a direct answer to “how to be playful”. This is something for me to think about - not least of all because I’m not sure there’s an easy answer to that. Bernard De Koven might suggest that the way to be playful is to play…or to choose to be playful, which I agree with. But the honest answer, at least as far as I have at the moment, is that in order to be playful in a longer term sense - i.e. not just playful now, but to become more playful in general - you need to become a playful person. And that means putting the work in - to be continuously reconnecting and choosing playfulness, not just once, but again and again and again. You don’t get strong by working out - you get strong by repeatedly working out. But it does make me think. What could I provide to audiences, classes, workshops, that explains that in a way that doesn’t feel limiting, but empowering?
“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it” - Epictetus
One key takeaway for me, although this was governed more by a feeling than the results of the survey or any specific feedback, was that I need to change tack when delivering the PhD content to a non-research audience, especially one that is coming for entertainment more than education. When practicing on my partner, we both felt the content and the ‘shape’ of the presentation was strong. However, when delivering it, I felt the key points were perhaps not as clear, muddied somewhat by wanting to provide more context. I also didn’t provide examples and how this affected my own work, which leaves the ideas as abstract concepts rather than concrete examples. Thinking about Epictetus’ quote, perhaps I need to embody my philosophy - and overtly demonstrate it better - than talking about it.
Sometimes, in my darker PhD moments, I worry that I’m sucking all of the fun out of being playful. The look I get when I tell people I’m researching playfulness feels to me loaded with “but we all know what playfulness is”. In a way, this was exacerbated by being at Pictoplasma, listening to lots of inspiring creative people talk about playfulness. But, as I have mentioned previously, I don’t think this is a barrier to my research. If anything, I think it proves the need for it - because playfulness clearly is important to contemporary creative practitioners. Really important. It drives many of their practices - it is a key part of their work. Plork is about being able to conscious, practically, support artists doing this better and more actively.