The 'Audio Tour' Presentation!

 

PROMPT: For your Presentation Assignment, I want you to put together an Exhibit of Comic Book Art, to be shown in the Hallie Brown Ford Art Gallery. Your exhibit should showcase a piece of art from each comic in class, OR 3 works from class and 3 from your own collection (an outside book). The work of art can be anything from a single frame (which would be blown up to make it easily viewable) to a 'splash page' (meaning a full-page frame or a double-page frame).

AUDIO TOUR: Your Presentation is the "audio tour" that takes guests through the exhibit and tells them a little bit about each piece so they can leave smarter than they arrived. Your tour can follow any format you like, but you should briefly introduce each piece (the artist, the comic, etc.) without trying to give us lengthy plot summary. Pick works of art that follow a specific theme—something that connects each one, and that can help you discuss them in your presentation. Themes might be Coming of Age, or Representations of Identity, or From Darkness to Light, etc. Help us see the aspects of style, color, transition, characterization, and other aspects that help tell this story, and make the image a unique work of art.

FLIPGRID: I’ve made a Flipgrid account for our class: Superheroes as Literature @ ECU. The code to join is “grasso9485.” So go to flipgrid.com and put in the code, and then join with your ECU e-mail (it will ask you for a Google or Microsoft account—ECU is Microsoft). I’m also going to add everyone in class as a “co-pilot,” which will allow you to post your own topics/presentations. Ideally, I would like your presentation to be a 10 minute (or less) Powerpoint (or other) presentation that you can narrate on a video. Flipgrid makes it easy to share a Powerpoint and record your voice over it. This way, we get the illusion of an actual audio tour with pictures and words! And you won’t even have to write a word…unless you want to read an actual script (your choice). Instructions for creating a topic and recording a video are on my Topic on Flipgrid.

HOWEVER: If you really don’t want to record a video, or you don’t have reliable internet at home, you can simply write it out as a script that someone would read for the recording. In this case, you would have to turn in a script taking us through each panel and discussing it following the guidelines above. You would still have to discuss 6 works, and connect them thematically, but you would only have to write it out, which might be more or less work, depending on your aversion to technology.

REQUIREMENTS AND DATES: The presentation has to be under 10 minutes, since that’s all that Flipgrid will allow. But that’s plenty of time to go through each slide and make some clear, concise remarks about each work. If you choose to do the paper, there’s no page limit, as long as you cover all 6 slides and say something about each one. However, the paper requires you to quote more, since we can’t see what you’re talking about.

Due by the end of Week 3, the weekend of January 2-3. I strongly discourage late papers/presentations since I have to start preparing for the Spring semester and need to square this away before then. E-mail me if something comes up that prevents you from finishing; we can discuss it on a case by case basis if necessary.