Pompeii

The Prompt

Global worming is affecting the quality of life in ways that were not anticipated by the world scientists. It has affected the atmosphere. The world has a dark cloud blotting out the light just as the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius blocked the light and rained terror down on the citizens of Pompeii. People around the globe are becoming fearful and are acting in extremely hostile ways toward their neighbors. Nations under tremendous stress are becoming more and more belligerent to each other, both to friends and foes. This morning BBC, CNN, and almost every newspaper in the Western hemisphere reported on a Greco-Roman cult announcing that the Statue of Apollo has been transformed into flesh and blood and is strolling the ruins of Pompeii. With a sarcastic tone yet a sense of mystery many reporters have announced the return of Apollo, the Sun God and God of healing:
“Apollo is leading the Gods reclaiming the town of Pompeii… they are seeking the reconstruction of Pompeii, curing all its ills and bringing back their City of Light.” Countless citizens have flocked to the ruins of Pompeii. They attest hearing Delphic Oracles of Apollo, around Mount Vesuvius calling out "know thyself", "nothing too much", "avoid hubris”, and so on while referring to the end of the Hellenic period of religion.
In Rome, the oldest copy of “De Architectura” has disappeared from the museum. Meanwhile, around the world a number of widely respected, signature architects have been talking to their friends and colleagues about a bizarre dream they had the night before. Every one of them had dreamed of conferring among many, around a white round table with Vitruvius himself.
In the US, religious leaders from all sects are condemning the newspapers’ countless articles glorifying the “pagan” Gods and Goddesses, and their various interpretations claiming “the end of world religion.”
Curiosity was booming, newspaper headlines across the world were asking:
>> “What will Apollo, as the Sun God and God of Healing, change to bring back the light and atmosphere?”
>> “How will the past and present, and the old and new be reconciled in
Pompeii?"
>> “How will the reconstruction of Pompeii serve to influence the rest of the world?”

The Presentation

It took our group a long time to finalize our project, but in the end we pulled it all together. We started our presentation with me and Tyler. Tyler was posing as a GNN News network corresepondant covering the 2008 Global Climate Change Summit, and I was the one speaking at the summit. Tyler introduced me and I gave a short speech on the "dark cloud" that is currently covering the Earth and about how global warming was causing. After a little while my speech is interuppted by Tyler whispering something in my ea and handing me a paper and I turn my attention and the audiences to a related "GNN news broadcast" which we filmed. As soon as the broadcast is over there is a loud trumpeting music and Justin and Jordan burst into the room. Justin is wearing a toga and is pretending to be the God Apollo and Jordan is one of his followers named Hermes. They take over the summit and answer questions me and Tyler ask them and they explain the New rebuilt green Pompeii and pass out the brochures and handouts. We ended with a little tif between me and Apollo and then questions.

The News Broadcast




Reflection

When I first saw the prompt, I had no idea what to think, I thought it was a joke. I had absolutely no idea what we were supposed to do. Once I got in my group and we went over it together and started actually brainstorming and thinking up ideas, I started to see how much we could really do with the presentation. As the time went by our ideas continued to shape and change into new and much more interesting things. Our original idea was to create a twenty minute news broadcast, but we realized that that was probably not the best way to go, after weeks of working and changing our ideas we came up with our presentation. A lot of it came together at the end. I really feel that this time we worked together more, rather than just putting individual research together. We all helped with the video in some way this time and we all had some input on the scripts. Me and Tyler worked on the brochures together and Jordan and Justin had input for us when we were done. Although we had a lot of last minute additions and changes, I felt like this time around we were all much smoother. We all already knew each other and knew each other's strengths and weaknesses. The prompt this time around gave us a lot more room to be creative and I really enjoyed that. Although there were stressful parts of it, it was really easy to just have fun and laugh during this presentation, there was a lot more room for comic relief.

The Other Presentations

Yet again our group, four, went third. The first group that went was group five who did their presentation as though it was a PBS pilot show about Roman History. It was very nice and the props they used definitely worked well. I thought it was creative and interesting. The next group had a prompt about the Panethon. They did it as a news broadcast, similar to our original idea, but it was very interesting because only half of it was video, a lot of it was live. They also included a lot of funny things, like a cannoli commercial, which I thought was really funny and creative. Then we went, although we had some technical difficulties at first. The next group did a full video for their presentation. Unfortunately, the DVD stopped working a little ways in. The next group went while they tried to figure things out. The last group also had a really wacky prompt like ours. They did it as a business presntation. The models that they made were definitely really cool and you could see how much research and work that they put into it. After their presentation the video presentation was finally able to work. The video was good, but there were a lot of thing said in passing that came out a little offensive to me and should have been worded differently or explained better. All in all, I think everyone did a really great job and I'm really excited to go to Rome!