Sebek Fall 08 Thesis

Some of you have asked me for advice on how to arrive at the best possible thesis project and process. Let’s face it, it’s up to you to make this happen. Your Big Idea needs to emerge from your passions. We cannot prescribe that for you. As an educational institution, Parsons sets standards and the bar for excellence but in the final analysis, the degree that you are getting is meant to facilitate your success in the world-whether that is as artist, a designer, or both.  In the MFA DT, we are dedicated to using design and art as a social change agent. We strive for our faculty and our students to make a difference in a very complex world that needs a lot of rethinking. How you are going to make the best contribution requires taking stock of where you are in your life, where you want to go, and how you’re going to achieve it.  One year from now, we want to make sure that you’re on your way to a successful career with a thesis project in your hand that will get you to that first opportunity.

Here’s how you start–

1. Throw away all of the things that you’ve thought about for Mini Thesis. I mean all of it. Start with a clean slate. READ THE THESIS SUMMER ASSIGNMENT — STEP BY STEP– do all the readings. Jot down your ideas about the readings. See if the readings jiggle any possibilities loose.

2. Begin with the end in mind. What do you see yourself doing next year when you walk out of the MFA DT? Will you be pursuing grants and a teaching position to fund your creative and artistic ideas? Will you need to have completed a business plan to push a business idea out into the marketplace? Will you want to freelance in the motion graphics or animation or web or gaming industries? Will you need a permanent position with a large corporation so that you can climb up the ladder and become the CEO of a company? Will you want to get yourself a job with a small design firm so that you can have lots of input on the future of the company? 

3. When you get close to answering that idea, do some primary research (direct experience research). Say you want to become an artist — are you going to be pushing the envelope in the interactive art world? If you are, you had better know that world inside and out. You need to know who is making what art. Who are your heroes of that world? Whose work would you like to be seen with and why? Who are the curators who would give you your first chance in that world? GO AND SEE lots of art. (Go to the Foundation Library at 79 Fifth and attend the free sessions on how to get sponsored as an artist). Begin to stake out your own point of view and make a project that illustrates that. Find a curator who you can have a conversation with about your project. What are they interested in seeing? Why would they OR WOULD THEY NOT give you a spot in their gallery? Talk to mentors in our department. Many have shown in galleries.

Here’s another example: Say you are making a branding project. Who does branding projects in the world? Do you want to do this as an art or culture jamming kind of project? Do you want to work for a huge advertising agency? Do you know which position in an agency you would go for if you worked in one? Do you know the heroes of the branding world? Have you looked at Adbusters and seen what they do to use branding in a political way? Do you want to bring a product to market? What are the steps in doing so? Why this branding campaign? LOOK AT A LOT OF BRANDING CAMPAIGNS. Begin to stake out your own specific niche in this crazy world of branding. Does branding always have to do with product? What about propaganda? Isn’t that a kind of branding? How do people get their brands noticed? How does one get a media buy in a certain market? Is it a print campaign? How do print campaigns get sold? (see Charles Warner’s website on Media Selling to understand this world–look at the Culture Jammers and the Adbusters sites). How to TV campaigns get sold? How does a branding campaign get off its feet? Who is an expert at this? GO AND FIND THEM. JOIN AN ORGANIZATION THAT SUPPORTS THE AD MAKING BUSINESS (BDA, Art Director’s Club, AIGA) Get them to look at your campaign to give you advice on what works and doesn’t. Find the people who test branding campaigns (this is a huge field that is mostly run through a complex series of focus group events or ethnographic research and observation).

Let’s look at a third example: Say you want to be an animator in a production company. Which production company? Who are the owners of the company? How did they begin their careers? (See David B. Levy’s book on Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive). What would any of the people who own animation companies want to see in a future employee? What would they want to see on their reels? MAKE A PROTOTYPE…Go and see several owners of animation companies. Ask them how they recruit new talent. Show them your rough prototype and find out what you would have to do to get hired there next year.  I don’t mean to be crass here. The reality of the world is that there is a marketplace out there for your work. You have to understand that marketplace. You have to become an expert at navigating that world. The trick is to keep your own ideas in tact as you navigate through these rough waters. JOIN AN ORGANIZATION that supports animators. (ACM SIGGRAPH for 3D animators, ASIFA EAST for 2d and mixed media animators). 

4. I am singling out specific examples here just to give you an idea of what you need to do: a. define an industry or art world that fascinates you personally b. find out more about it–become literate in it by reading about it and meeting people–make something that could be a prototype for a thesis that addresses something that that particular world needs or perhaps is already engaged in. Remember that as artists we usually point out problems in society while as designers we usually try to propose solutions. The MFA DT thesis does a bit of both. We also engage in the process of recording our thoughts about this investigation. This is what becomes your documentation and eventually leads to your analysis of a problem. Once you have analyzed a problem you can begin to draw conclusions about it.  Engaging with mentors and groups is such a FIRST critical step that we want you to accomplish this as a minimum before you begin your fall work. Showing off rough prototypes of your ideas to people who are engaged in the business you want to be employed in or be financed by is a very scary thing to do. But you’re learning. Learning is a humbling process. Everyone that you will meet along the way want to see you learn and succeed. Now is the time to build this network of people around you. If you are intimidated by it, find a classmate or a friend to come with you or go in a group. If you are making an animation that you want to submit to festivals, find out what happens to films that are run in festivals. Do they ever recoup any benefits for the animator? Which festivals produce the best results? What kind of animation would you have to create to get screened? Which websites are best to see great work?  (see www.awn.com or www.motionographer.com, http://feed.stashmedia.tv/, www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/, www.mographwiki.net/Main_Page)

5. Once you have found out what the world out there needs, you can begin to address a topic that interests you in the specific area that you have picked as your area of interest. Say that you are interested in bio-fuels. What would it take for you to visit a bio-fuel company? Where are they? Are they top secret installations? Are there people who are guerilla bio-fuel makers who you could learn from? 

Do you see the pattern I’m trying to set out for you? You could, over the course of the next month, look very deeply into one area or skim many areas that may sound interesting to you as you do your investigation. The main point is to engage in something that emerges out of your own life, the ideas and projects that you may already have done even before you came to the MFA DT. 

6. SCHEDULING: If July 15th sounds like a good date for a deadline, make a list of  EVERY THING that you want to do by then. Break the steps down into their most minute detail. Give each step a time frame, an hour in a day when you’re doing it, an ACTION step, and what you’re looking to get out of that step. IF YOU DON’T SUCCEED at the step, you have to reschedule it to try again. Scheduling and planning is elastic kind of practice. Sometimes you accomplish a step very quickly and you can adjust your time frame to reflect that. Sometimes it takes much longer and there has to be room in the schedule to squeeze new stuff in—or reset your deadline.

Just so that you know, I’m aiming for EVERY one in the class of 2009 to have a thesis project that will open doors after graduation.