"Mark Two: The Sequel" was a performance on December 8, 2025, as part of the 2025 Alter Egos: Audio Visual Showcase. It was the culmination of work done in the class Alter Egos, led by Professor Ali Santana.
The performance centered on introducing Mark Two—a sequel or improved version of myself. Think of it like a movie sequel or a new product release in a product line.
The performance had two primary goals: to experiment with performance art and to push myself out of my comfort zone. This was my first time preparing for and performing something like this on stage in front of an audience of that size. Getting more comfortable in front of an audience is a general goal of mine—I still feel uneasy with public speaking and presentations. I wanted to use this as an opportunity and safe space to grow more comfortable with it.
Performance is incredibly fun. The idea of performance used to make me very uneasy, but that feeling of uneasiness means there’s something worth digging into and exploring.
I felt very nervous before the show, but that's just the body signaling that there’s something at stake. Rationally, though, nothing serious is at stake—the environment and context mean the audience will be supportive no matter what happens. This creates a rare and perfect learning environment: it feels important enough to make you nervous, but you can't actually fail. You can only grow from the experience.
Live performance means live feedback—but I’m not a skilled enough performer yet to process any live audience feedback in real time. No matter how the audience reacted, I would have barreled forward the same way.
In the future, I'd like to learn more about the history of performance art and performance studies theory. I also plan on taking an acting class, improv class, and gunning for more opportunities to perform and be in front of an audience. At the outset of the semester, I hoped that this class would really jumpstart an entrance into performance and I feel that it did just that.
RAW OUTDOOR SCENE FOOTAGE
EDITED OUTDOOR SCENE FOOTAGE
To make the outdoor scene feel more realistic, I added network connection lag artifacts: