DISSERTATION PRESENTATION

In September, during a lecture with all third year students of all of the degrees which come under the art and design spectrum, we were asked to write our dissertation subject onto a piece of paper, the paper was then passed around the room where other students wrote words which they associated the topic with.

It was fairly clear by mine that none of the students knew what reconnaissance meant, in fact a few even seemed to mistake it for the Renaissance! 

I faced a big problem because as part of the dissertation I had to do a presentation on my methodology. I could talk about reconnaissance all day long, however for this presentation I only had 10 minutes. I therefore needed a quick and simple way to help the other students to grasp my topic, and to hopefully catch their attention. 

At the end of the presentation I decided to turn the other students and tutors into makeshift Photographic Interpreters, they each received a letter from RAF Medmenham with an attached reconnaissance photograph and were asked to spot the v-weapon. In the letter I also gave tips about how the PI's used shadows and interpreted the normal before the unusual as strategies to determine objects on the ground. 

This presentation group consisted of 6 fashion students and 2 photography students including myself, the group were lovely and supportive. I was happy with this arrangement being interested in fashion myself, however after sitting through 6 presentations by this point, by my turn there were a lot of bored faces in the room - which is understandable!

I felt the presentation went very well, but as soon as I set them the v-weapon task there was a sudden buzz in the room, my tutors especially became very excited and refused to let me reveal the final slide (which contained the answer) until they had exhausted all possibilities. Nobody spotted it and one tutor walked into the trap by saying that she would never have known what to look for - which was the point of the exercise, the P.I's did not know what a v-weapon looked like to begin with either!