Kickstarter Misadventures and Pre-Research Research

Hello Everyone!

After many weeks of difficulties, our kickstarter is finally up! It’s hard to believe it is. For a while, I almost thought that our kickstarter wasn’t going to happen. We had some struggles getting approved and identified through Amazon Payments, and then we needed to wait two or three days for our project to be approved by the Kickstarter organization. There was a lot of back and forth on the phone with Amazon, and days of waiting, but it’s finally up! And we’ve already had several backers join the project, which is incredibly exciting. Every time a new person decides to add funds, I (Patty) get an e-mail and get so excited I feel all jittery and full of life and want to jump up and down. Kristen and I send each other **high five** texts (:

Every dollar that is added to the project gets Kristen and I one step closer to Vienna. So thank you to everyone that has already invested in us and our research and thank you in advance to everyone who is considering and will a part of it. We're already 20% there! We have 18 more days! Please help us out!

Besides funding, Kristen and I are madly preparing for our time in the city. Kristen can tell you more about her reading and German preparation in her post (which will be coming later in the week), but I’m preparing by reading and researching culture in Austria and Vienna. I’m looking into the phenomena of the “Kaffeehaus Culture” and reading about the various parts of the city that are famous. I’m also preparing for the classical music scene by teaching myself to play some waltzes on the piano (I studied classical piano for many years, so now I’m getting to put that into good use, I guess!). 

Y'know, the classic waltz: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/F1mmHn-FD48" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Written by Strauss about the river that flows through Austria and Vienna.

I’m trying also to look up movies and clips that show the Austrian-Bavarian dialect that is spoken in Austria. Even though everyone speaks “Hoch-Deutsch” (the type of German one learns in school and that is spoken in most of Germany and that I speak), I want to make sure that I can completely understand Austrian-German. So far, I feel very comfortable with it, and I’m sure this’ll be a great asset to our research in the long run. 

As part of our preparation, Kristen and I are also compiling a reading list of books that give insight into the city and it’s history and culture. We’re beginning with “The Hare with the Amber Eyes” by Edmund de Waal. This was suggested by my advisor, Janice Ross, when I told her about our research. Professor Ross was really enthusiastic about our project and about our choice of location. She said that the location was a wonderful fit for the project, and that her one suggestion was for us to read this book and that she wished she had read it before visiting the city herself. Apparently, the book powerfully and valuably sheds a different light on Vienna than one would otherwise experience. I haven’t begun it yet but I’m excited to do so and will definitely let you know how the reading and our thoughts and conversations go! If you know of any other books to add to the list (we’ll put a working list up on our next blog), please feel free to let us know.

Oh, and here’s the link to our project - Thank you for checking it out!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/440962610/the-vulnerability-project-film-and-photo-exploring

Patty

The Beginning

Hello (:

Welcome to the Vulnerability Project. This the blog that I (this is Patty speaking) have created to keep everyone who is supporting us in the loop about what is going on with our research and art project.

You see, I, my friends, am travelling to Vienna on July 15th with a good friend of mine, Kristen! We're currently raising funds through Kickstarter, but have hit some bumps along the road, and so are putting our fundraising video up on youtube. If you are interested in possibly funding us, and would like to make a pledge, please send us an e-mail at thevulnerabilityproject@gmail.com. We can use any and all support!



Basically, Kristen and I are fascinated by the fact that humans appear to have an innate desire to connect with one another. Using our different mediums of artistic interest (mine being film, and hers being photography), we want to interview people and explore how vulnerability and connection impact their lives and relationships. By the end of three (maybe four?) weeks, we will have enough footage to create a short film of interviews on vulnerability and photo collection on connection.

We chose Vienna because we wanted to see the far-reaching effects of vulnerability outside of the United States. Vienna is a city of music and art and culture, and since I speak German, it was a naturally place to want to explore and get to know. If we receive enough funding, Kristen and I will look for a second location that will be interesting to juxtapose with the environment of Vienna (our thoughts so far are a small town in Ireland, because we want to see the difference between a big city and a small town). Vienna is also home to the "Kaffee-Kultur", or Coffee-culture: a culture revolving around the concept of meeting people for hours and sipping a cup of coffee with a good book or more commonly, a good friend. Seeing as these coffee-hour friendships run deep, we want to explore how this particular culture approaches the ideas of 'vulnerability' and 'connection'.

So far, we're funding out own tickets to Germany (where my parents live) as well as providing the equipment we both need. Kristen got her camera from school and my camera is actually one that belongs to Kristen's dad. Using our summer earnings (I'm a research assistant with the Stanford Closeness Project and Kristen is a photography teacher), we're paying for various other pieces of equipment and whatever we cannot get covered by our fundraising.

It's so exciting to be exploring this topic and seeing how people around the world interact with one another, and how on some level, all human beings are the same in their desire for connection and need for vulnerability. Both of us will be blogging here and updating all summer! We are so excited for this adventure and so see where we end up!

Check it out and subscribe for updates!

Lots of love,

Patty