Photographs of the object:

The Poncho: 

Each Puzzle (both are designed and crafted by yours truly):

About the project:

Title of your piece: “Embrace Different”

Date: December 11th, 2019

Approx. Dimensions of the object: When folded in quarters –  16 x 13 x 0.5 inches

Materials:

• Latex 12-inch blue balloons
• Malleable thin plastic sheets (usually Polyurethane) 
• Staples
• Blue Sewing thread
• Glossy Cardstock printed paper
• Chipboard (Approximately 1/3 inch thickness
• Plastic push buttons (attached to plastic sheet)

Site location:

In front of Washington square’s playground, located in Greenwich Village, 4th St. to Waverly Place and Macdougal St. to University Place. 

Duration of Performance:

About 3-5 minutes, depending on the availability of each person.

Photos documenting the performance:

Video of performance:

Video description:

Although I was able to interact with a few children at the park, I was not granted permission to document the encounters because their parents/guardians would not allow it (for safety purposes). Therefore, the video posted above is an interaction I had with the mother of a student who attends Parsons. As she was passing through the park, she stopped to ask me what the object and the assignment entailed and then was nice enough to partake in building my puzzle to find out what the significance of the printed messages on my poncho.

Reflection: (Addressing prompts from Canvas post) 

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) refers to a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication. Additionally, the term “spectrum” reflects the wide variation in challenges and strengths possessed by each person with autism. (Autism Speaks Inc. c2018)  

For this project, my performative object addresses the common knowledge barriers that prevent young individuals diagnosed with Autism from participating on an equal basis with others. In particular, I wanted my research to be focused on the lack of inclusive education in schools across the United States, and how this has impacted the social dynamic between special needs and mainstream children. With “teachers not only hesitant to implement individualized instruction, but they do not even know how to do so,” (Rosenzweig, 2019) and no further reinforcement from the parents or guardians, it can be extremely difficult for children to accept and embrace differences within their school community. In many cases, this knowledge barrier has lead to a substantial number of students with disabilities facing increasing rates of abuse and restraint in schools. 

My target audience is children because, as a child grows, there is a window of opportunity when their experiences shape their developing brain. During this critical time, that scientists call the ‘sensitive period’, a child’s neural circuits are especially open to learning through new experiences. After the window closes – though it never completely shuts – the brain can still learn, but it is harder, and the results are rarely as good. (CHILD Magazines, 2019) Therefore, I believe I can have left a greater impression on children as opposed to adults. 

Since I decided to target children, this meant that my performance would have a greater chance of participatory engagement in front of Washington Square Park’s playground, located in Greenwich Village, 4th St. to Waverly Place and Macdougal St. to University Place. 

In terms of the actual object itself, it is designed to be an interactive hand-made poncho that, at first, attracts children with the oddity of using blue balloons (which is related to the slogan “embrace different” which I have attached to the back) as a means of storing the puzzle pieces I created, then later engages them to physically complete the puzzles and inadvertently learn more about Autism in doing so. 

Having never made a performative object, let alone even heard of the term, before this course, the idea of making and performing something that is meant to be outside of a regular classroom setting was stressful, to say the least. Because I consider myself a relatively outspoken person, I was not as worried about interacting with people as much as a few of my other classmates. However, as I later learned, interacting with children is a completely different experience. For one thing, children tend to have little to no filter. It was interesting to discover how some children I engaged with said exactly what they thought, no matter how harsh or strange or bizarre it may be, while others were too shy to talk that much. 

By raising awareness about Autism in an engaging and informative way, I hoped to have, at least, touched upon discrimination, celebrated the diversity of our global community and encouraged the full inclusion and participation of people with special needs, to redefine the relationship between children participants of the park and those who are different from them.