A long time ago, in an exhibition far, far away

If the title didn’t already give it away, this year’s first exhibition theme was Star Wars. Like many exhibitions I have done in the past, this project was led by an inquiry question that related to the overall theme (Star Wars). We had recently studied the difference between open and closed ended questions, and how to refine our inquiries to sound more knowledgeable, well put together, and possibly more simplified or broadened depending on the question. With this new information, we could come up with more professional inquiries that take more effort to answer than a simple yes or no, but still aren’t too complicated to present and explain to an audience. With much thought and research, I came up with a question that I found both suitable to my interests, and was open ended enough to promote proper research and investigation. My question was “What are the similarities between the animals on Earth, and those on Alderaan?”, which was a more narrowed down and less sloppy version of my original question of “What are the similarities and differences between the plants and animals in Star Wars and the plants and animals in Earth?”.

The research portion of the project began with watching the Star Wars Movies, which was helpful for somebody like me who had never seen Star Wars before then. Every Friday they would play one or two of the Star Wars movies after school for anybody who was interested to come and watch. Unfortunately, I missed the movie that would’ve contained any information on my topic, so most of my research was founded from a handy website called Wookiepedia. Although not all of my information was obtained from this site, it was indeed the most helpful. When searching the web, I was specifically looking for anything regarding three animals from Alderaan that I previously picked out. Those were the Vorn tiger, Grazer, and Iraida. I was searching for any possible links between these foreign animals, and some similar creatures found on earth that could have influenced certain traits or features that the ones from Alderaan portray. I took what I had learned, narrowed down the key points to feature in my presentation, and found ways of rewording my information into a state that could be understood by everyone, including those who knew nothing about Star Wars.

The first Alderanian animal, the grazer, had the plump complexion of a chunky farm animal such as a pig or cow. That, and the fact that they are both farm animals used for their meat and milk make the pig and cow perfect candidates. In addition, the grazer is a herbivore and has big udders, just like the pig and the cow.

The Vorn Tiger, which is blue in colour, has tremendous horns, big pointy teeth, and a muscular build. The obvious choice of an earthling doppelganger for this animal was the Tiger. With the major similarities in physical features such as teeth and body shape, as well as a similar hunting style, the connection is hard not to see. Tigers are solitary hunters, as are Vorn Tigers. They both also mark their territory with scrapes and scratch marks. The only difference between the two is that the Vorn Tiger does this using its horns rather than its claws.

Lastly was the Iraida, a big brown furry creature with humongous ears and a pointy snout like you wouldn’t believe. I found many resemblances to a bat when I researched this animal. The ears for one, grant this creature impeccable hearing, which is one of a bats most well-known qualities. Iraidas are also quite intelligent and have a higher success rate that other animals when hunting, similar to bats.

The research was completed and it was time to start thinking of what I could do to creatively and effectively showcase my information. I wanted to go beyond a poster board, so I decided that instead I would make models of the animals out of clay, and would paint a backdrop to have a place to show what my question was and what the world of Alderaan looked like (before it was blown up and wiped out of existence). I gathered all possible materials I would need and got to work. By the time I was finished, I never wanted to touch another clay figure again. The amount of times my figures cracked and pieces broke off was more than I could count. During this project, hot glue was my best friend. With that said, I still managed to pull it off and was happy with my final product. I displayed all three figures on white boxes with a little description on each one. Behind the figures was the painting that I had made, which turned out great in my opinion, and that would also display my inquiry question. I added a splash of colour to my mostly white display with some small fake trees, which really added to outdoorsy Alderaan setting.

While I was in the process of perfecting my project, I also had to work with the rest of my class, plus the grade eight PLP students, to plan and decorate the room that our exhibition was taking place in. Everybody was put into one of two categories based on their question; you were ether on the light side or the dark side. I was put into the light side. We had different students devoted to different aspects of preparing the room. Some people did the decorations, some did the food, some mapped out the room and where things went, and some organized interactions with the audience, such as skits and games.

We decided to all dress up as characters from Star Wars that would make sense for our inquiry questions. I went as Breha Organa, the adopted mother of Princess Leia. I chose her because she was one of the only important characters from Alderaan that wasn’t Leia (I couldn’t do Leia because someone else already chose her). Then we started to list food items and games that we could create and bring and listed who could bring what.

From there, we divided everyone up into sub groups again based on their inquiries. There was the science group, philosophical group, and the tech group. The room was divided into three, each area contained one of the three groups. We all decided to model the room after the rebel base on Hoth. Hoth is an ice planet so we added cotton on the windowsills to act as snow, tinted the lights blue with coloured paper, and made the room cold by opening the windows. The first section of the room was supposed to be the outside of the rebel base. There we had all the people with scientific questions set up their stations. We used bed sheets to act as walls that divided the three sections. The second section was the first half of the rebel base where the tech group was, as well as the Admiral snack bar and the pin the lightsaber on Yoda. This section was also where the stage was for the skits that some students prepared, acting out important scenes from Star Wars. The last section was the philosophical group who were stationed at the far end of the rebel base.

When people first started making their way through the exhibition, my anxiety was off the charts. I was nervous that nobody would like my work or would find it boring, but to my surprise, they seemed quite engaged in what I was saying. With this said, there is always room for improvement and there are actually quite a few things I would change if I had to redo it all over again. For one, I would bring a sweater; that room was freezing. I would also get some better clay that didn’t fall apart so easy. I wish I would’ve left myself more time to do something more with the boxes that I displayed my figures on, but due to lack of time management, I couldn’t go ahead with my plans of painting them to look like tree stumps, or painting them at all for that matter. There are always details that you wish you could go back and fix, but overall, I was very proud of myself and my work and am excited to see what’s in store for the next exhibition to come.