I submitted a proposal for a
creative residency yesterday. (
Here's the video part of the proposal.) I don't know how to go about these things, so it took three days.
First, I had a lot of trouble coming up with the actual project. I have lots of project ideas, but none of them are connected to biology. It took a while to find one that I thought was compelling while also matching their other criteria.
Secondly, I don't really know at all what the people that judge these things find compelling. I made a prototype, and making the prototype did not go as smoothly as I hoped. When I finished it, it was 3 AM on Saturday.
It worked well as a prototype in the formal sense — it tested out a particular idea so that it could be evaluated. But it did not make for a great
demo. There wasn't that much of a "wow" factor. It was also too late to do something else, but I sat there all night grasping at straws anyway.
The point of a proposal, anyway, is to pitch something that might be compelling after you work on it for three months, not to somehow prebuild something that work take three months of work. So, maybe I should have made completely fake mockups with the disclaimer that things may not actually work out this way? I always dismiss that kind of thing when I see it, but maybe I should consider other people's possible mindsets here.
Building for a mindset you don't understand is almost awkward and results in something inauthentic, though. In conclusion: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯