Being a live painter allows me unique opportunities...like being hired to paint live while accompanying a friend and her classmate during their final group presentation in her college communications course. I love that I get to do what I love to do AND also collaborate with others.
The topic was the internet and how it is growing and learning...and moving towards more and more intelligence. My friend pointed out how we are all helping to create it in collaboration as we feed it information...about ourselves, about each other, about places, things, events, etc. Every time we interact with it we are causing it to learn about how we think and feel...and it's taking note...and remembering.
I got to help illustrate what was being shared by creating a painting that depicted the internet. I had a canvas off to the side with just the Google search bar (representing what the internet started out to be...us requesting from a search engine). I also had a canvas that I was working on during the presentation that was made up of lots of images (representing what the internet is like now...us interacting with it and each other through endless ways). We had the class choose tiny images that I would paste onto the canvas and then I began connecting the images with paint. And with that interaction, the painting changed.
The presentation was only about 15 minutes long but it was power packed with lots of interaction and participation with the each of the members of the class. We were able to practically represent what my friend and her classmate were sharing through the presentation. We all created that painting together in collaboration and community. ...and that is very much like the internet. As we learn, so does the internet, and it continues to change.
I was told that no one had ever had a live painter involved in a final presentation for that course. Now...we've changed the way people might think and view a final presentation. And that...is the whole point of the my friends' talk.
