Sarah Theurer and Professor Joseph Ostraff, Department of Visual Arts
Progress of the Project
Through video interviews with students across the US as well as in Great Britain, the Silent Signals project intended to create a portrait of the current university generation through documention their non-verbal communication and signals. We set out to do this through video taping, breaking down, and comparing their gestural responses to 25 questions about society, love, family, money, and education.
As we began interviewing the first sets of students however, the project took a major turn. Although we originally intended to document only their non-verbal signals, we found that what they were saying was a huge influencer for how they were saying this. There was a wide diversity of gestures and signals, but for the most part, a persons non-verbal “vocabulary” was very individual and depended on their level of comfort during the interview and with their responses.
What tied the students responses together most was an overwhelming similarity in many of their answers. None of the questions were answerable with a simple “yes” or “no”, and all required personal explanation. A surprising number of students, whether they be 18 or 28, or whether they attended a community college or UCLA, in various geographic regions, shared the same fears, concerns, and questions regarding their current world and generation. Many held the same hopes and aspirations although they were aspiring to enter completely different fields of work.
Being that this was a creative project and not driven off of analyzation of collected data, these similarities amongst the participants, juxtaposed with their wide range of differences, was much more interesting. Artistically, it created a better portrait of the generation and their communication. Therefor, the project took a shift and rather than just focusing on the students signals, the entire picture was included: their answers to the questions, their facial expressions along with their physical body gestures, etc.,
Successes and Issues
Creatively this shift was huge success. As I began to edit and piece together different students answers we were able to see more juxtaposition between interview, students of different backgrounds who felt very much the same and stunts from similar areas who held really unique individual insight to their generation and the questions posed. The work was more interesting, and artistically made for much better video work. Since the questions were not simple “yes” or “no” questions, many students became intimidated by their answers, feeling the need to look a certain way in front of the camera. In the interviews that were less-than-sincere, or when friends were interviewed and based their answers off of what a previously-interviewed friend had talked to them about, there was a lot of trite and insincere footage, that seemed uninteresting and was unusable next to those participants that were honest and sincerely gave their own individual answers.
The majority of interviews however, the students opened up a surprising amount and shared personal experiences and insights to explain their answers. I had not expected that in a 20 minute interview with a complete stranger. Some participants cried, many got emotional, some laughed, but all that have participated (that have been interviewed so far) left the interview saying that it was a surprisingly positive experience and that it was more interesting for them that they had expected a massive art project to be.
It proved much more difficult than anticipated to find students in some university areas. Most of our summer interview trips to some areas (for example, the trip to the northeast and the midwest) had to be moved to the start of 2012 because there were so few students in school who had time to participate during the summer months. Many worked full-time when and if they attended school during the summer months.
Overall the students were extremely helpful in helping us to find people to interview. Many got excited about the project and would talk to others and send out my e-mail, resulting in a wave of emails volunteering to participate.
Working with a Mentor
Professor Ostraff was very helpful during this project. All of the ORCA funds had to be used (and supplemented with personal funds) for travel expenses to the 8 different university areas. He helped in finding ways to obtain and use simple equipment available generally or through BYU, so that the grant funds would not have to be used to purchase new and expensive equipment. Professors and students with the BYU departments of film and media studies also contributed. As the project made a shift at the start, in looking at what the students were saying in addition to the how, Professor Ostraff was extremely supportive and offered advice and insight into how this might be done. He recognized the creative advantages of shifting the research slightly and now is being most helpful as the project is wrapping up, by helping with resolve creative issues in the work and helping the footage to be prepared for the final exhibition.
Results
I have interviewed students so far in Utah (for our local demographic), in the Southwest, the West Coast, and the Northwest. Our trip to the South/Midwest will be in March and to the East Coast/Northeast will be in February, in order to find the largest number of students available to be interviewed in those areas. The final exhibition of the interactive video installation will be at BYU in the BF Larsen Gallery on April 23-May 11, and other galleries and participating universities have been contacted and arrangements are being made for the exhibition to travel.