Pitch Day and Visiting the rooftop

Throughout this week in the lead up to the pitch, I have felt the same as I did in the previous week. However now I feel like the cracks in the group are starting to show, which is a shame as we all got along so well at the beginning. We all shared the same ideas and were all really on board with knuckling down to produce something the rooftop project committee would really love.

We did however pull together to pitch our idea to the panel. Mark and Femi were nominated to pitch our idea as the most confident speakers in the group, and I feel the overall pitch went well. The response from the committee was mainly positive, they really liked the overall concept but were unsure as to why we wanted to create an enclosed space to 'escape the city life', when the feeling you get from being on the rooftop is exactly that. They advised us to abandon the structure idea and move the location of our installation to the stairway that will be accessible on the night of the exhibition. This seemed to be something that could potentially work really well; working with the same original concept of the sensory experience. We were told that the stair way is only wide enough for one person at a time, which would give each individual a chance to have their own sensory experience when climbing the stairs.

I feel like not having yet had access to the rooftop space has been one of the difficulties we have had throughout this process. Following our pitch today we requested to see the rooftop so that we could get a better idea of what we were designing for in our final coming week. Photographed below are a couple of images of the space we have been recommended to work on.

Top stairs

Top section of the scaffolding

Overlooking the whole space

Having seen the space I immediately had lots of different ideas about what we could do to utilise it. For example, although the panel were not keen on having an enclosed space on the rooftop itself, creating an enclosed stairway would heighten the experience for each individual. We had eventually been able to connect a couple of the screens together and I had thought we could use these to make an arch over the stairs, encasing them. I also thought we should focus on just two or three of the senses and create things that respond to those, rather than trying to do too much all at once..

We have agreed to meet early tomorrow to refine our ideas and get started with producing them. I myself am aware of the little time we have left and want to make the most of it.