Prof. Michael O'Rourke DDA-606B, Seminar II

Assignment

Mid-term Thesis Proposal

This mid-term proposal is a first version of the final thesis proposal you will produce at the end of the semester. This mid-term version is necessarily less developed and less extensive than the final, but it begins to cover the same materials and issues as what will become your final. Refer to the Thesis Benchmarks document developed by the DDA faculty for more details of exactly what your final proposal will eventually consist of.

This mid-term proposal will be presented in three forms:
A) In-person to your classmates in class
B) As a paper
C) To the DDA faculty whom you will meet for external critiques.

Your mid-term proposal should include:

A cover page that lists: Tentative Title of Thesis Project; Your Name; Current Date; Seminar II; Name of Seminar II Instructor. (Please consult the Sample Proposal Paper files for help with the formatting of this paper.)

A one or two sentence Abstract of the general topic and form of your thesis project.

Discussion of your concept and inspiration.

Detailed descriptions of the physical form and technical details of the project.

A preliminary production schedule: This can simply be a list of the sequence of tasks and approximately how long you expect that task to take.

Supporting visual materials: Make sure you identify all illustratiosn with captions indicating who the artist is and title and date of work if known. If the artist is not identified, we will assume you are the artist.

A research bibliography.

Orgainze your paper so that it is clearly formatted. You are encouraged to use the sample file provided in the link above. You are not required to follow this formatting exactly, but it is a good, clear, format. (Your MFA thesis paper will eventually follow a similar format.)

Include lots of illustrations. In illustrating any proposed final work, indicate the scale of the work.

All of your final materials should be assembled into one coherent PDF file/paper and posted to your blog. The organization of your materials should be clear and obvious within this paper. The content of your materials should be thorough and thoughtful. Also print out one paper copy of this PDF file and hand it in to the instructor on the due date.

You will present this same material to your external DDA critics. You may do so using exactly the same PDF file that you posted to your blog, or you may organize your materials somewhat differently for your external critiques. If you do so, do not change the content, but you may organize things differently to facilitate your in-person presentation.