Dissonance Day Day Day: Things Fall Apart

Typically I set courses up to drive to the end of the term with (hopefully) all of the pieces coming together in the last few weeks. This one was set up differently. It was set up to sort of fall apart. I am fascinated by that gesture – used in Blazing Saddles, and The Holy Grail, and most of Caryl Churchill’s work, some Velvet Underground, some of Brecht’s stuff, some of Shaw’s stuff, Situationists, Metzger, and a handful of other examples.  The gesture is about dissemination as opposed to containment, dispersal as opposed to consensus. The main point is that – sure – I could summarize everything we have discussed and wrap it up in a nice neat little study guide – but why? If most of the artistic activity that we have looked at circles around the idea of floating authority, challenging the rules of the past, and imagining a different future what good is my summery? So – we listened to music and the students looked at books, or slept, or talked. They worked on their projects, or slept, or talked – and in this case about some interesting things. I’m anxious to see what the final projects are like. As with most of the assignments this term – I really have no idea what to expect.

Dissonance Day Twenty-six: In which we sit around and listen to records:

The last time I taught this class when we got to the post-punk/glitch section I really wanted to follow the impulse to just play records and listen. My initial idea was to try and recreate some sort of late 70s rec room in the gym, but lacking the necessary drive and supplies I settled on a kind of fort or nest – which was little more than a few blankets laid out on the floor.  I dragged over some furniture and an old mattress that was there and then tossed out a bunch of books on things like punk, post-punk, no wave, and glitch. Kind of like a reading nook at some library somewhere – probably the Pacific North-West.

I really wanted to keep my mouth shut and just listen, but I really can’t. I projected Wikipedia overviews of the artists, bands, and albums but interjected every so often. I knew once we got to glitch I would talk and talk. I am fascinated by this subject and having just finished writing a paper on it I have more info that I really know what to do with. I felt it was important to ground the contemporary dubstep stuff in its history – which I see at Yasunao Tone and Oval. But also the gesture to aestheticize the type of stuttering sounds Tone was making. So – I started by making some with a sharpied CD on portable player. Like Tone – I love the fact that I can’t predict what sounds will come out when I hit the machine or where the laser will hang up. Rather than use the go to “supatrigga” I really need to start recording stuff onto disk and then actually glitch it rather than the glitch-a-like stuff. Maybe I will work on that next week when the students are working on their projects.

I did have sort of a mild revelation about this kind of space though. It had an unintentional Montessori vibe to it. From what I understand, the Montessori classroom is filled with objects and activities that the students gravitate toward. The teacher’s job then is to work with each student on these activities while also helping them develop more complex activities. Wandering around I had a number of interesting conversations with students that had gravitated to one book or another (sadly I didn't get to have a conversation with each student). I wonder if this is a way to approach this type of subject. Lay out a variety of options and then work with students on developing there interest. There are of course always students that will take this as an opportunity to tune out, look at email or text messages, sleep, have a conversation with their friends, etc (although it is possible that these students were tuned in - doing what I was doing and finding info about the bands or songs online).

But I wonder what the attention span for something like that is. If class is set up in such a way where students that show interest in a particular idea are given attention and supplied with more ideas and materials whereas those tuned out are ignored how long would it last? Would ignored students eventually take interest or simply remain detached? In this scenario the teacher’s efforts are directed toward students who want those efforts and not squandered on those that are indifferent. I know this sounds elitist – but that is not the intent - it does how ever change the dynamic from dwelling on students uninterested in the material to focus on those who are. I am genuinely interested in the question “what makes you curious?” If rhizomatic teaching develops out of engaging each student with their interests and their knowledge base would this be an appropriate way of approaching this. I just don’t know. But it does provide something to think about. Perhaps as we move into the final week of the class I can tinker with these ideas and see what happens.

I do have to say that as much as I like these individual conversations I do miss the group warm up and group exercises. Don’t know if anyone else does too.

Dissonance Day Twenty-five: Hey you kids, get off my lawn!

So – basically a continuation of the previous rant or post or whatever it was/is. I know given the impulse to set something in motion or raise questions or doubts last class (whether successfully or not) I needed to remove myself from the class. This can, of course, be accomplished in a number of different ways. If I simply don’t show up the fear is that students will assume class is canceled and go home or get coffee of whatever. If I completely structure a project for them – some kind of happening that sends them across the campus on a scavenger hunt for people, places, or notes I am still in charge and I may as well just teach the damn class. So – the solution for today was to destroy my notes. I placed them in nine envelopes with a note that basically had variations on the following:

“Congratulations – you had the initiative to open the envelope! You may ask any questions you like about Metzger’s essay, auto-destructive art, or the auto-destructive projects. If you are interested in using my question you will need to piece them together. I suspect you may need to consult other envelopes.”

I thought about having the envelops on the floor when the students entered the space, but that almost seemed too subtle and that gesture raises the same fear as students assuming that class is canceled. So – at the start of class I wandered in and placed them on the floor in a deliberate cross pattern and wandered out. I have no idea how long it took the students to realize that I was not coming back. I have no idea if they opened the envelopes. All I know is that after about 15 minutes they all came out of the building and sat in front of my office. Not sure if it is all of them – they may have split into different groups or some may have left. Sitting on the lawn in front of my office seems like a challenge – which is nice – a way of saying “look, we are doing what you want” – or something to that affect. It is an obvious gesture of visibility, but one that I appreciate – they could have all just left or sat in the classroom and talked. There does seem to be a lot of laughing, and at least one peer into the window. I figure I will just sit here and blog about my take on this.

What I have to say is that it is killing me not to go join them. I keep coming up with excuses to go outside and at least acknowledge their presence. My first thought was the iconic “hey you kids, get off my lawn” statement. But that seemed too desperate. I thought about following the peer into the window with a comment, but again, that somehow seems too needy. Then I started to gather books that might be useful or interesting to look at – a few on Metzger, Stewart Home’s Assault on Culture, and this wonderful book called Under Destruction from an exhibit at Museum Tinguely. Then I decided not to interrupt the conversation with my crap (although for some reason I do feel the need to post the links here). Part of walking away is that I have to be prepared to walk away. One thing I can say is that walking away from a class is much harder than actually teaching it. Especially this class.

I’m not sure why but it feels “new,” the way classes feel when you first start teaching somewhere. You don’t know the students, they don’t know you but over the course of the term you get to know each other. I have to say that I have been delighted by the level of work this term. By the questions, by the conversations, by the dynamic that is created by this mixture of students with this material. That is what is so hard to walk away from. I really am hooked on the conversation. But as long as I am asking the questions it can’t really evolve beyond my own obsessions and fascinations.  I find that I do get frustrated from time to time with students I think can work harder, push themselves farther, develop ideas more fully, but then I think back on all of the great work that has been done this term and the frustration dissipates. Bob and I had always talked about deliberately creating an obsolescence for ourselves with both the Gen Art class and the Virtual Worlds class. That has been the trajectory here. The hard part is that without Bob I’ve no one left to talk to. Well – that may not be entirely true since the students just popped into my office (complete with the phrase “don’t know if you saw us out here”) and tossed a bunch of papers – presumably the envelop material, and left a piece of notebook paper with – well who knows what. I’ll wait for the class to be “officially” over before I look at it.

I have found that in the past after classes like this students do want to talk about it. That may or may not be the case here. So, I figure the next class we listen to some music. I am happy to talk or not talk about today’s class. The impulse to do so will not come from me. I suppose I should just set up the material and leave, but there is no way in hell I am leaving my records alone in the gym. Way too valuable to me. Plus we do need to discuss what happens the last week of class. In retrospect before I removed myself from the class I should have covered all of that. OK – well – there is always next time.

OK - P.S. time. Glad I went up to the gym. I love the fact that no matter how a day like this is framed at some point tables and chairs are turned over. One of these days I want to teach in a classroom where they are always turned over.  Having picked through the detritus left by the class, including the faggot on the porch (in the most traditional sense) and the remains of what looks like a fire, I finally sat down to look over the scraps of paper. I must admit I am touched. Partly because I did see walking away as a sort of betrayal, but also partly because it is clear that at least some of the students understood why. The comment "you missed a great class" also comes with the acknowledgment that had I remained it would have not been so. Students sitting around talking about art - at an art school - go figure. I know that this gesture could only come at this point in the term - any earlier and too many would have walked away. To those who stayed. Thank you. Hopefully when I return to the conversation it can be as a participant and not a leader.

Dissonance Day Twenty-four – God! I am such a fucking wuss!

Part of my approach to this material is that I should no longer be needed. To create an atmosphere where experimentation can happen, where failure or success don’t matter, where I no longer need to ask the questions and conduct the sessions. If a large part of moving to the present involves flagrantly fluting the rules (of aesthetics, politics, social structures) I am baffled by lemmings. Perhaps it is the deadening of the American educational system. Perhaps it is 8:30 in the morning. In any case, I am frustrated by the fact that about half of the students are ready to take these ideas and make them their own while the other half still feel compelled to ask me what I want them to do.

Yes – I was pissy when class started today – for a few reasons. We have started every class for the past 13 weeks with some sort of exercise – physical or mental. And yet students still need to be told to get up out of the fucking chairs and move to the open space. I give quick instructions on the mental exercises and students still worry about what I am asking for. I am not sure how else to convey that what “I” am asking for doesn’t matter. The instructions are deliberately vague because I am more interested in what the students – alone or in groups - do with the exercises. It has been that way since the beginning. My frustration comes out of two different impulses – 1) I am tired of hand-holding and 2) where did I screw up that created such a dependent situation?

Typically I get the impulse to “blow up” a class at least once a term. It is probably hard to explain what I mean by that, but it largely has to do with limiting my agency or control or completely withdrawing from the process. It often takes the form of a Happening in which I am not present. These are useful projects in that students are forced into leadership roles – open boxes, read notes, ask questions. But then generally order is restored when I return the following class. I think because I have been interested in the projects and in the conversation this term I have not felt this impulse until now. Today I needed to plant the bomb and then light the fuse next class. I really only went half way. I started edgy and agitated and pissed off but that gave way into being drawn into the translation exercise and then the conversation about punk.

Punk segues to Situationism which segues into Deconstruction and I could talk about that shit all day. I addressed the notion of Larvatus prodeo (I advance masked) in the sense that someone like Debord makes a final gesture of releasing his film contracts as if to say – “Look – I am anti-capital but made a lot of money here – even I am full of shit.” It is a brilliant gesture. It helps destroy binaries and at the same time forces the viewer/reader to think for themselves. I do often attempt to take this approach to teaching in that I have ideas and opinions – but they need not be yours. Part of that gesture has to be destroying the teacher/student binary – of removing the “leader” from the group. Today it needed a stronger action than simply suggesting I set the class up based on projects because I was too lazy to fill this time or to grade essays. It was a very feeble attempt. In all the years I have been working on this type of gesture only one student has directly understood. When asked to provide an example of deconstruction he cited the class and my approach. He was dead on.

But like Johnny Rotten’s idea of “no future” designed to be a call to arms but interpreted as nihilism shows that the message sent isn’t always the one received. I realize that this gesture involves combating years (generations?) of educational systems that asked questions that had ready-made answers and ranked students on how quickly and how accurately they could dredge this information up. But the role of the artist (at least as it is defined in our culture) doesn’t always have answers – some only have more and more questions. So – do we need to train artists to say “how high” when we ask them to jump or do we have to place them into positions where they need to figure out if they want to jump at all and then how they would go about approaching that gesture? I’m rambling, but I don’t think training artists is about conformity or correct answers, I think it is about problem solving.

So now I have a choice. Do I show up at the next class and continue the same process of leading the students through exercises and questions or do I make them do it? Do I stay and watch or leave? Do I provide questions or just say “go”? All of those alternatives suggest control and a hierarchy. Do I push the hierarchy to a breaking point – a point beyond which they will not go – force the hand of rebellion? Part of me feels that we have built up some very good connections this term and I am unwilling to destroy those for this gesture. There has to be an approach that takes me out of the “teacher” or “leader” role and still allows a conversation to develop. Do I let them form groups based on interest – knowing at least one of the groups will not be interested in talking about any of this shit.

I know that this is at least a three part deal – set the bomb today – which I kind of sort of did, light the fuse, and then process the aftermath. The aftermath is designed to lead into the last few days of the term, which are left open for the students to create their own projects and ideas. Some are ready for this – have been ready for this for some time – some will simply give up their agency to another student.  I wonder if a semester is just too long to sustain this kind of energy. Perhaps in the future I should cut them loose after about 10 weeks and then uses the final weeks to go back and process everything they did.  This seemed to work better in a team teaching situation. As Bob pointed out – the students don’t have to worry about the teacher since they a friend along to keep them company. Perhaps that is part of what is going in with this dynamic is that I am doing it alone. In any case, I do know that part of the aftermath will just be a listening party (a kind of “difficult listening hour” built on post punk and glitch) – but I don’t know what the ignition looks like yet. Well I have a weekend to figure it out. 

Dissonance Day Twenty-three – Auto-Destruction Projects:

This was the project I was looking forward to all term – mainly because I know it was a complicated one, but also built on the other projects. Bob and I gave the Gen Art class a similar project in that the students had to create a system of motion that could sustain itself for at least an hour – that was the assignment that infamously used the “bags of meat.”  The Dissonance project had a minimum of a half an hour with no maximum. What I like about this assignment is that it is designed to work in opposition to traditional aesthetic training. At this point I can only speak for my own background, but my training as a performer and designer rested on building toward a specific goal. While there may be some simplification or stripping away in the process, the end result is something that has been “created” rather than pulled apart. I do think the rhetoric of “creation” and “destruction” is often far too exclusionary. One does not necessarily exclude the other. An act of destruction can be an act of creation and vise versa. Of course what I love about this kind of thinking is that it allows me to discuss deconstruction.

I have been thinking about where to pull this in for a while. We need to loop back to the Situationists – who also moved between creation and destruction – to deal more specifically with the fall out from May of 1968. Having happened largely in the universities of France it had a huge impact on the thinking of the next generation – which included Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and Baudrillard. An embracing of both/and as opposed to either/or is certainly the legacy that these students have grown up with. The fact that so many of them have explored juxtapositions suggests that it is ingrained in their thinking. I may need to devise a deconstructivist exercise for us to do in the first ten minutes of class.

So – the projects. I must admit that some just knocked me out. Very clever solutions to the problem. The most successful were the ones that included the thought process – the writing about why the piece ended up the way it did. In the next incarnation of the class I need to make this more a part of the assignments. My hope was that by leaving it flexible that students would express these ideas in the blogs – that has not happened with most of the class. Since some had lost of cleanup to do we didn’t really get too far into the discussion. I am interested in how they approached it, what questions arose, what ideas did they discard, were any risks taken, what did they think of the other solutions? I really do feel like I am done at this point – not the class or the students – but my contribution. We basically have three days left – one on the auto-destruction projects, one on Metzger, and one on post-punk and glitch – which is really more of a listening party. The final week is turned over to the students to see what they can come up with on their own.

Dissonance Days Twenty, Twenty-one and Twenty-two- falling too far behind:

The process of being in class, being out of class, back into class has certainly disrupted the momentum at this point the term. That may be part of the structure. What is interesting is that while the Gen Art class was chomping at the bit to create ideas for projects this class has settled into a much more student/teacher mode. I’m not sure if that is the result of the projects or of how the class has progressed or the fact that we have five more weeks than the Gen Art class. I have felt that for most of the term we were ahead of where we had been last time I taught this class. Since that last time was not project driven but more of a survey of the literature – that might explain the momentum. Given how the class is progressing I am right on the edge of pulling back from controlling the assignments and the overall structure of each day.  I think about half of the class is ready for this. In that I mean that they are ready to continue to explore these ideas on their own. The remainder might take it as a sign to completely stop working. This is my fear in the final projects – about 15 or 16 are ready to go all they need is the word, the rest may simply just slack off. Hard to tell without connections in class or in the blogs.

So – I find that when I offer a more traditional day in class – such as showing slides and talking about the Bauhaus – it is much less satisfying than when we just talk about the ideas. Perhaps in the future I will opt for the hybrid class in which some of this presenting can happen online and then we can use the class time for discussion. Although if the presentation were done this way the students wouldn’t be confronted by a room tangled with ropes.

So – the survey of the Bauhaus was designed to give students enough to think about for the space exercise. This set up for this project was that each group received a box of objects – rope, a mirror, cone, paper, ping pong ball, and 2 dowel rods – and that they had to use these elements and the elements that they could find lying around to create a piece about space. They could either present the piece or create an experience for the class. Out of four groups one chose to create a performance piece by binding themselves together. Another created a piece to be displayed and to a certain extent interacted with – basically two mirrors reflecting off of each other with the rods bound by rope in the middle. The third group marched us down to the chapel where we had to make our way through a maze of stuff piled in front of the entrance while they wildly applauded on the other side. The fourth group created a kind of obstacle course in the kitchen to be navigated by a representative from each group.

I found each of the pieces interesting for the exploration of space, but some groups did a wonderful job explicating how and why they generated the piece they did. Having to think about space, navigate space, control it or wrestle with it proved to be an quite useful when discussing it afterwards. I am still trying to remember why the Bauhaus stuff ended up at this point in the term. It really is a 180 from some of the other stuff – perhaps that was why.

A day off and then the Situationist Project – the first written project – based on a Situationist assignment where you praise and then criticize aspects of the group. I will be going more into depth on these writings next class. The goal with the Situationist stuff was to open up the class space a bit more to ideas – and also to get the students outside of the classroom. So – we decorated the bridge with rope, wrote on the sidewalk with caulk, and left messages in the student center about what it means to be an “artist.” I must admit that part of me was wrestling with proving an experience for the class – as well s those that followed after us – and tying this back into the discussion of the Situationists. I did not feel like a did well on either count – so we will revisit these ideas and tie them into Metzger’s on auto-destruction. The most successful aspect of this class was getting out of the gym.

Dissonance Day Nineteen: Scattered with too many things to share:

Its funny, whenever I go to talk about something in class that I love or have taught a class on ideas pile up and come out in a jumble. Today’s topic “generative art” comes pre-digested after more than a year’s worth of conversations with Bob, a ten-week class, and now research and thoughts leading toward an article on Cage, Reich, and Eno. Too many observations, too many examples, and not enough time to digest them. So – In class today: The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka – playing as the students came into the room, Reich’s “Come out,” Reich’s “Pendulum Music” – performed by one live mic, moiré patterns, Eno’s Trope for iPad, Thicket for iPad, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz for ipad, Conway’s Life, B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, and Eno’s 77 Million Paintings. I also made reference to Lucier’s “I am sitting in a room” – played in the first few minutes of class earlier in the term. The process of spending 13 minutes listening to “Come out” proved to be the most useful. Students had great comments about this piece in terms of what demands it does or doesn’t place on the listener and how one might listen to the piece. So this was another day where I struggle with either going back to my notes to hit on a few key points or letting the conversation develop any way it goes. I think part of why I keep coming back to this is that generally I don’t have such a large collection of students interested in talking about this stuff. So it’s a good dilemma to have.

I do want to come back to the process/product question as well as the notion of things developing over time. For me, the visibility of the process is such a contemporary, postmodern thing. That doesn’t mean that the process was invisible throughout the history of art, performance, theatre, etc, but that more and more the process has become a large part of the product to the point where they are indistinguishable. It seems to be the same tings as the whole life/art divide. 20^th century art really does work to collapse this – especially in the last 50 years or so.  That was really the point I wanted to make. But I do find it odd that quite often this term I have been frustrated by my need to sort of summarize everything after the fact. These “wrap up” days – while yielding some great conversations – are often not my most favorite classes in the sequence of project, discussion, analysis/history. Hmmm. I wonder if there is another way into this. Something to think about.  

Dissonance Days Sixteen, Seventeen, and Eighteen: Way too many days running together:

Way too many days running together. That’s what a spring break will do. And actually these three class days do blur together as basically transition days from one idea to the next. The projects have been mostly individual efforts (no one has asked to collaborate yet – so I figure I will wait it out until someone asks), so I figured we need to do more group work. We started day sixteen with an exercise cribbed from Brian Dennis’ lovely book called Projects in Sound. Ostensibly a book for elementary and middle school teachers to have their students explore sound. It has some fantastic pieces in it – some quite sophisticated in terms of the generative quality of sound. Perfect for what we were doing at this point in the term. So – after we warmed up I broke the class up into five groups and handed each group a “map” – well really one of those Situationist psychogeographical maps. Their task as a group was to treat this as a piece of music and perform the map in sound. Some wonderful results. Most groups compartmentalized with each person taking a specific sound that when blended together made a whole piece. Some went all at once, some were orchestrated to add or subtract sounds as the piece developed. Really quite lovely actually. We may do a similar exploration of space when we get to the Bauhaus.

 

After the exercise we spent some time discussing the Fluxus pieces. Some great observations on the nature of control and of letting things go to different interpretations. We also went back over some of the terms techniques that have been developing. I posted this list before but here is a more expanded version:

Suspend intellect (embrace nonsense and the "primitive")

Exploitation of form

Parasitic of history (Duchamp's urinal needs art and the museum)

Antagonistic

Iconoclastic

Collage (of images, text, ideas)

Chance (poem, image, sound)

Juxtaposition (the antithesis of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk)

Spontaneity

Automatic writing (reaching out toward unconscious)

Noise (embraced as aesthetic element, not interruption)

Negation of high art VS low art

Devaluation of skill, training, talent

Simultaneity (multiple meanings simultaneously)

Dynamism (goes with juxtaposition as combination of elements)

Philosophical or aesthetic concerns over commerce

Process over product

Indeterminacy

Open work – interpretation

Life into art/art into life

The next step was to begin to run these ideas through the S,S,&C material and the P2P website stuff. Starting with my favorite Greenberg quote on modernism (“The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.”) The interesting ting is that most of the folks we have explored are working in-between disciplines. Adds a nice postmodern twist.  At the end of class I gave them their next assignment – the sound machine project assignment. I figured why not make it fun. The boxes each contained a crumpled up piece of paper with a description of a machine drawn from reading Deleuze and Guattari's Thousand Plateaus.

Day Seventeen started with the warm up and then a sharing of the projects. Some students did some remarkable work – a few working clearly outside their comfort zone with a “machine.” Some appeared to give the project little effort. I debated whether to start back from spring break with a project or not, but I wanted to recapture the momentum we had going into the break. So, I figured this would be a step back, but one that could move us forward. The word “machine” was an interesting one. Most don’t tend to think of artistic expression this way, but some of the machines were beautiful in their movement and execution. I have videos of them and will post – eventually. Given how messy some of these were there was really no time for discussion after class. I can’t wait to see what happens with the destruction projects.

Day Eighteen. Back to word games. Pick out a word from the dictionary and give it the most interesting definition you can think of. Some were very playful. No one passed me the dictionary so I didn’t get to play. At this point we had a discussion about the sound machines. I am glad that I programmed these sort of open discussion days in the syllabus. This is where some of the most interesting work happens. I don’t think this kind of approach (project driven) really works without a follow up discussion. What I am always struck by is how interesting the process is on projects that may initially not seem that interesting. This is exactly what I am getting at in terms of postmodernism as opposed to modernism. One is focused on the process and the other the product. At a school that is almost completely product oriented this lead to an interesting discussion. Some great points about not being afraid to fail since the projects don’t have the same kind of expected outcome as more artistically inclined projects. I pontificate way too much – but the point I am, trying to make is that to sustain a career as an artist in any field means constantly exploring, pushing the boundaries, going out of your comfort zone, otherwise you end up repeating the same thing over and over again.

We largely abandoned my notes since I found the conversation that developed far more interesting. I did draw on two ideas though – Barney’s idea of hypertrophy and how this can be applied to art, education, muscle growth, whatever. We also dealt with the notion of problem solving. I really do believe that problem solving a huge part of being an artist in any field. Its making choices to develop a role, setting up a film shot, interpreting a choreographer’s moves, picking which variation on a guitar chord to use, what color, line, shape, texture to employ, etc, etc, etc. I do think that the idea of problem solving is the key to these project driven courses. That is how you gain an understanding of a subject – but doing it – getting your hands dirty, making mistakes, making changes, adapting, being in a dialogue with the work. Well – that – and then reflecting back on what you have done. Next up we get to explore some generative art – yea haw!

Dissonance Day Fifteen: I really have no idea what will happen next:

I get this weird, nagging feeling each day projects are due. I wonder about the outcome. I second-guess the assignment. I think about how the presentation of the projects might go awry. I’m nervous, mainly because once we start in on the projects I really have no idea what will happen next. If I had to predict that we would see the bear again, or that someone would be spit on or sat on, or that someone would cut their hair I would have found it impossible. As the “author,” or perhaps I should say “originator” of the Fluxus inspired pieces for today all of the students were in the same position that I was in. They did not know what would happen next either. If part of understanding how we got to where we are today in terms of aesthetics and the production of artworks is dealing with the notion of “postmodernism,” then I think we got a good look at it today.

Traditionally, or at least in a traditional sense, creating artworks has a certain amount of intention as part of the process. That typically goes hand in hand with controlling the elements involved – whatever they may be. This gives rise to the idea of training or skill or what have you. This gives rise to certain assumptions or “rules” of art. It also gives rise to the notion of “good” art and “bad” art depending on how these rules and the results are interpreted. The ideas developed by the Futurists, Dadaists, Surrealists works to crack this open – basically the list of techniques I included on day thirteen. After these folks, Cage is a turning point in that his development of indeterminacy helps fuel the succeeding generations. I loved the point that if all you have is a hammer you tend to treat everything like a nail. The techniques developed by these folks doesn't necessarily function like a hammer and therefore the product isn't necessarily a nail.

What I really loved about the Fluxus pieces is that they are suggestions for a direction. That is really about it. They provide a great deal of room for interpretive possibilities. As the students saw today, what someone else was able to make out of their pieces was not necessarily what they had imagined or intended in creating them. Aside from that, the class today was just fun. Noisy, loud, punctuated with laughter and movement – much more interesting than simply listening to me drone on and on about the Fluxus folks. I recall that the last time I did this exercise in class it was a much more somber affair, much less interaction between “performer” and “watcher.” In away the presentations today had the same quality that Bob and I saw with the first Virtual Worlds projects – the sort of barely structured chaos of the avatar presentations. And like those projects, I really didn’t know what to expect next.

Starting with the idea of students as creators, interpreters, and life-long learners we discussed the pieces with these questions:

In composing these pieces what did you aim for?

As the "author" what do you have control over?

Anyone surprised by the interpretation?

Who is the artist here?

What does indeterminacy allow for?

How do you watch the pieces you wrote?

How do you approach interpreting these pieces?

Did the musical, sculptural, and performative ideas have any bearing on interpretation?

Where is meaning located?

But in that moment when the pieces were performed we all watched, we all listened, none of us with any more knowledge of what to expect than another. The comment that “I didn’t realize that they were performing my piece until they read the card at the end” is a great jumping off point for a discussion of the “open work.” So – the plan for the next class is to weave all of these observations from the projects in the first half of the term into a conversation about modernism and postmodernism, open works and process. I am debating the parameters of the Gen Art project only because I really don’t want to back off of where we are at this point, but I do want to focus our attentions a bit more on the analytical aspects of the course. The Gen Art project is really a continuation of the Fluxus pieces in that it is designed to make the “creator” step back from the project and watch what happens. After that we begin to shape the ideas a bit more specifically engaging in a conversation about The Situationists, The Bauhaus, Auto-Destructive art and then post-digital. It is hard to believe that we are only half way through the term. The trick will be trying to sustain this level of energy until May.

Dissonance Day Fourteen: I’m starting to wonder if there is a pattern emerging here:

What a great conversation today! I was actually kind of surprised at the number of hands that went up when we started to talk about indeterminacy and Cage’s notion of non-intention (as it is framed by the Zen notion that there is not good or bad no ugly or beautiful but just is).  La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 #9 (the infamous line across the page) generated some wonderful points about expectation and interpretation as well as the role of the artist. My hope is that we will be able to sustain this as we discuss the Fluxus pieces on Tuesday. So, following a day when I felt like I lectured far too much we have a day where I really don’t have to say much at all (but because I can’t seem to shut up about this stuff I do anyway). Interesting – I wonder if a pattern is emerging here. One of the issues I still need to deal with is staying on the path that was decided for the course and following a different path that emerges from the student projects and in-class conversation.

In a number of ways I feel like the Fluxus pieces are the last big push toward establishing the foundational elements of the course. Generating a handful of additional techniques that we can then bring into the remaining projects. Indeterminacy is certainly one of the main ideas, but also the notion of concept art. As we begin to discuss intention and interpretation. What our expectations are in what an artist “does” and how “art” is “produced.” The In Bflat website is a good example of this: http://inbflat.net/.  I am interested to see what will happen when we shuffle the Fluxus cards and students have to create an interpretation on the spot. This tends to reveal a wide range of interpretative possibilities. This is also why the cards should not be labeled “music,” “sculpture,” and “performance.” This is the last step before spring break. After that we immediately go into the generative art section where the students are forced to step away from the sound machine they have created and just watch and listen alongside of everyone else

Much like the Gen Art class this one feels like slowly chipping away at the resistance to be expressive in a specific moment. More students contribute to the conversation – although not all students – but this may be an unachievable goal. I went back and forth on the exercise to start the class with today, but in the end I was quite pleased with the results. I realized that I need to get them to start collaborating more and in smaller groups. So groups of three had 10 minutes to produce a “collage” (which could be defined as any mixture of sound, text, images, movement, etc) built out of what they group had on them or what they could find in the space. What I loved about this project is that I didn’t have to spend 10 minutes explaining it – the ground rules were set and then they went at it. This never would have happened 3 weeks ago. Also – the noise level and level of working exceeded the first half an hour of the DADADAY! stuff. So – it seems clear that something is changing in the class.

I did mention to the students that they should be noticing that the type of exercises and projects are changing and how this relates to the pervious work they have produced. So – unlike the sections when they were simply tossed into the projects today was about introducing Fluxus ideas and questions in the hope that they are more mindful in executing the Fluxus day assignment. The point is to begin to examine these ideas in a deeper and more thoughtful analytical way. As always, I am both nervous and expectant to see what they come up with.

Dissonance Day Thirteen: Hi, I’m a teacher, welcome to my lecture:

Ughh. I hate when I do that. Lecture. When I feel the need to explicate, to defend, to make certain that the message received is the one I am sending out. It’s a tedious way to investigate this material. Especially after starting each section with a project or in –class exercises. To resort to just telling the students things directly seems like a copout. But, rationally – isn’t that the job of a teacher, to explain things? Perhaps. But there is more to it than that. Getting a student to understand something on their own terms rather than mine is a much better solution. But then one must be willing to give up controlling that understanding. Rhizomatic education happens in multiple ways. I suspect when I go back over this blog I will see that each transition day – when we are ending one section and moving on to another – ends up feeling a bit like today. I know we had days like this with the Gen Art class and the Virtual Worlds class, so maybe that is just part of the dynamic of how this works. Or – maybe I just can’t help but to want to explain stuff.

I knew I wanted to discuss why the Surrealists developed the techniques that they did. I think it is important that we dissect these movements and ideas this way. Get to the philosophical ideas behind the surface chaos. To make the point that even though some of this work may seem purposeless, it is all done with purpose. My fear is if the students do not see this behind the chance and juxtapositions and such then it just seems like some pointless exercises. Even with the explication it may still seem that way.  My goal with days like this is to help them look beneath the surface of the techniques. To ask “for what purpose.”

So – from Surrealism to Cage to prepare for the Fluxus stuff for next class. I knew I wanted to get Breton’s points about the dullness of mind exposed to only rational things, to dream logic, to the notion of the marvelous built on new and surprising combinations. But the real subject of all of this emerged with Miles’ comment about how he has been exposed to this his whole life. People that grew up with the internet grew up excepting collage, expecting juxtapositions, expecting surrealist combinations as part of the normal world. That is what the technology was designed to do. There are connections here to Dada as well as things like youtubepoop that we need to explore in greater depth. In retrospect perhaps we should have followed this thought. But I also know that we have about half of the term left and if we follow this thought now I am not sure where it goes and how we develop from there. Odd that that would be the thinking in a class that deals with liberation, questioning rules and openness to the unknown. I never said there wouldn’t be any contradictions. But I do see the irony of this gesture. Play like I say to play not like I play. Again – welcome to my lecture.

Part of me wonders where this path would lead at this time in the term. But part of me also knows that we will have a much better vocabulary for that conversation when we reach the post stuff. It does dawn on me that while some of the students would be ready for this conversation at the point in the term – not all are yet. Chaos and order, chaos and order. I want to get out of the binary and then I fall right back into it. I suppose if I just lectured then I wouldn’t be concerned about such things, that I wouldn’t ask such questions. Perhaps I should dispense with notes, dispense with an agenda and just see what happens. Hmmmm.

So Cage is the connective tissue between the historical avant-garde and the more recent stuff. Why did I not have a section on him in the syllabus? I suppose I felt that we could use him to connect one piece with the next. My hope is the blathering I did at least established the ideas of chance as a discipline, indeterminacy, and pollyatentiveness. My hope is that we can go more into this with the Fluxus stuff. A change in rhythm with this section – readings first and then project. So we will see what comes of that. My goal at this point is to use that last class before spring break to ask all of the P2P questions about modernism and postmodernism before we head into the Situationists. I do need to work in more smaller group exercises at the beginning of the class. To try and find the balance where all groups gel instead of just some of them. This may not be possible, but it is worth a try.  

I left the class thinking about this:

Dissonance Day Twelve: In which I am fascinated by the conversation generated by the students but feel compelled to drag it back toward my agenda and am thrilled at the ideas that the students develop:

Wow – what a great class! The conversation was fascinating. In looking over my notes I was concerned that we wouldn’t have nearly enough to fill the class period. Turns out we only covered about 1/3^rd of what I expected to cover. The dynamic of this class is very different then when I have taught it before. A good deal of that can be attributed to the make up of students in the class – what their interest level is, their willingness to participate in the conversation, personal interests and interactions. Honestly – in a class of 28 students typically only about 6 or so are openly engaged in the conversation. With this class it is routinely more like 15-16 students. I have no idea if the projects or the way the class is set up encourages this or not.

But I do wonder about the projects. On the one hand they exist as something external to comment on and respond to. Unlike a reading assignment, which may or may not be completed by the student, a student that brings a project to class has participated in the discussion. While it happens on a number of different levels, they have at least given thought to a particular subject – so far “time” and “juxtaposition.” Add to this the exercises at the beginning of class each day and they have participated in a collective experience. – which isn’t always the case when a student simply slumps into a seat and remains disengaged. The other element of the projects is that they become a pretext for the conversation. Since every student has contributed a project and explored everyone else’s project they are in a position to have an opinion and to make connections to other ideas.

In asking the students to discuss what techniques we have seen so far we generated this list – which has been augmented with additional ideas:

Suspend intellect (embrace nonsense and the "primitive")

Exploitation of form

Parasitic of history (Duchamp's urinal needs art and the museum)

Antagonistic

Iconoclastic

Collage (of images, text, ideas)

Chance (poem, image, sound)

Juxtaposition (the antithesis of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk)

Spontaneity

Automatic writing (reaching out toward unconscious)

Noise (embraced as aesthetic element, not interruption)

Negation of high art VS low art

Devaluation of skill, training, talent

Simultaneity (multiple meanings simultaneously)

Dynamism (goes with juxtaposition as combination of elements)

Philosophical or aesthetic concerns over commerce

Process over product

I then read Manovich’s idea from The Language of New Media about how all of these techniques have been embedded into the structure of contemporary computer software. So – while many of these ideas still remain challenging for traditional artistic disciplines, the students have largely grown up in an environment in which thinks like “cut and paste” and the juxtaposition of nonlinear online windows has been commonplace. This certainly raises the question that the Futurists raise in that if our world is fundamentally different through technology how do we reflect that in our art?

Unlike the day after the time projects that kind of felt like a gathering day this one seemed to push the conversation forward. I don’t recall getting this deep into questions of intent, process, product, and concept this early in the term. It is nice, but it also raises the question of whether we will exhaust these questions in the next few weeks. I don’t think so, but you never know. I think I will ask the students a few key questions just before spring break. A kind of midterm evaluation to see what is working for them and what could be tweaked to raise the level of interaction.

Dissonance Day Eleven: Surrealistic Museum Project:

I have been looking forward to this project since it was assigned last Thursday. But I woke up this morning with a bit of worry. What if the projects are not interesting? What if no one spends any time looking at them? What if the assignment is just a bust and we have nothing to talk about? In the past when I have given this assignment it has been at the end of a section on Surrealism, this time it is at the beginning. Will the students have any idea what I mean by juxtaposition or clash of elements? Will they all just look up Surreal images online and copy what is there? Many question and concerns. However, as has always happened in the past, I was delighted by the outcome. Given the chance to be creative or do unusual assignments the students here tend to rise to the occasion. So that it wasn’t just an exercise in wandering around I gave the students a few things to consider up front and about a half an hour to explore everyone else’s projects.

Do you have any questions for anyone?

What do you see in projects executed by others?

Any intended meanings?

Any unintended meanings?

Any of the projects funny?

Any of them disturbing?

All of the pieces reflected the nature of the question posed. It was interesting to see what the students noticed in the discussion. Some of the same themes came up again and again – a number of stuffed animals and references to genitalia – either explicit or implicit. It was interesting that given the same assignment some of the pieces were moving, some frightening, some just laugh out loud funny. The intent of the conversation was to begin to explore this type of activity as a technique – one that either is useful or not useful in a kind of “tool box” of artistic techniques. In the discussion we further explored the following questions:

How did executing this project compare to the time project?

Is it simple to put random things together?

What of the see what happens idea?

Is this a technique you work with all the time?

Does this technique have a use value?

Did you discover anything you were surprised by?

What I like about this project is that is it asking the students to do something that they are not necessarily asked to do in arts classes (Julian’s classes aside). The general intent of projects in arts classes is refinement. Zeroing in on meaning or intention and shaping the work to fit a certain goal or parameter. It was interesting to hear that some of the students struggled with this project in wanting to refine the work. Others had the opposite reaction, that this project was easier than the time project since it required them not to think about meaning or refinement.

This course is not designed as an art class, but hopes to use these projects as a way of exploring certain techniques and the philosophical ideas behind them. Techniques that rely on chance combinations can ultimately take us places that planning and logic cannot. I need to weave all of this together and draw back on the Dadaists and Futurists in the next class but also tie it to Surrealism. So we will be moving backwards into Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto from 1924. The goal is to create connections between the projects and Breton’s writing. This is where I felt some of the projects were quite strong – the ones that included the paragraph about the process. Why the object ended up looking the way it did is just as interesting as the object itself. I need to push more on this both connected to the projects and to the blogs.

We do have some more surrealistic thinking to do in the next class. In all likelihood I will start them with some automatic writing.

Dissonance Day Ten: What is the difference between an aesthetic function and a cognitive one?

Does “art” make me think? Is it supposed to? I guess the question is what do I mean by “art” and what do I mean by “think.” While I can easily accept the artistic categories that have developed over the course of Western history do works created within these categories make me think? Think about what? Plays and films and paintings and sculpture and music and dance may make me think about social issues or aesthetic issues, or moral issues, but do they make me think about plays and films and paintings and sculpture and music and dance? I certainly buy Clement Greenberg’s notion that “The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.” But what happens when an artist uses the medium to criticize itself? Is this the shift to the “postmodern”?

Hugo Ball, under the sway of Bakunin, points out: "Know thyself." As if it were so simple! As if only good will and introspection were needed. An individual can compare himself, see himself, and correct himself wherever an eternal ideal is firmly anchored in closely knit forms of education and culture, of literature and politics. But what if all norms are shaky and in a state of confusion? What if illusions dominate not only the present but also all generations; if race and tradition, blood and spirit, if all the reliable possessions of the past are all profaned, desecrated, and defaced? What if all the voices in the symphony are at variance with each other? Who will know himself then? Who will find himself then?” (Flight out of Time)

These are fantastic questions. Do we need rules to guide us? Could we cope in the absence of any and all authority? If we play by the rules because we have internalized them does that leave us any room for true and unique creativity? What happens if we place the genius in the same rank as the idiot? What happens if we accept that life asserts itself in contradictions? Western culture seems – then as somewhat now – mired in a linear logic. A logic of either/or as opposed to Venturi’s both/and. If I place a Shakespeare sonnet next to one generated via Tzara’s Dada poem strategy of cutting up words and pulling them out of a bag what is at stake? Does an art built on chance ask questions that an art built on skill and technique and training and rules doesn’t ask? If I place Duchamp’s urinal next to Michelangelo’s David what happens? Do I as the viewer need to draw the line as to where I think “art” is? If I dismiss the urinal then nothing has changed. If I acknowledge the urinal as “art,” even with the tiniest glimmer of doubt, do I then have to acknowledge everything in the world as art? Or, do I just have to follow John Cage’s dictum that "Everything seen - every object, that is, plus the process of looking at it - is a Duchamp" So it is a combination of object plus the looking at it. I suppose the “looking at it” part is where the thinking comes in. Hmmmm.

I’m not sure that we have ever gotten this deeply into these questions in this class this early in the term. Not sure why that is. The questions and comments from the students today were great, quite engaging. I needed to largely abandon my notes and follow those questions. I look forward to the Surrealistic Museum projects on Tuesday, mainly because we still need to loop back to discuss DADADAY as well as the notion of chance, juxtaposition, and challenging an audience. I am curious as to how these ideas fit into the scope and focus of a conservatory education.

In any case I agree with Tzara in that “ Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws the threads of notions, words, in their formal exterior, toward illusory ends and centers. Its chains kill, it is an enormous centipede stifling independence. Married to logic, art would live in incest, swallowing, engulfing its own tail, still part of its own body, fornicating within itself, and passion would become a nightmare tarred with Protestantism, a monument, a heap of ponderous gray entrails” (Dada Manifesto 1918). In truth, “Morality creates atrophy like every plague produced by intelligence. The control of morality and logic has inflicted us with impassivity in the presence of policemen who are the cause of slavery, putrid rats infecting the bowels of the bourgeoisie which have infected the only luminous clean corridors of glass that remained open to artists” (Dada Manifesto 1918). Art that only follows the rules, that only adheres to a collective morality, that only in meant to be looked at passively and not thought about is a deadly art. Live art challenges – everything and each successive movement must in turn challenge the last. Not a snake eating its tail image, but perhaps one of creation/destruction/creation.  Much to think on.

Dissonance Day Nine: In which I attempt to abuse my authority to make a point and then just get bored with it

I wanted to change up the routine for today, mainly to make a point about authority and how we tend to silently agree and internalize the demands it places on us. Rather than start with the stretching and mind games I decided on assigned seats. The students were greeted by rows of chairs each with a name attached to it. As far as I could tell everyone sat in their assigned seat. Except, one student who swapped his name tag with someone else’s. Interesting. Little rebellious act I am trying to figure out if after a class of encouraged chaos I would be willing to sit where I was told. Maybe, maybe not. A Theremin also greeted the students – which by the time I got back to the classroom was making a horrible racket. Part of what I love about this instrument is that it sometimes has a mind of its own. I gave the students 5 minutes to ask me whatever they wanted to ask about the last class. A few good questions, but none really about “meaning.” Which is fine.

Today’s class began with two rules. 1) students that wanted to talk needed to hold the Barbie and unopened pudding packet I brought from home. 2) students could choose not to participate in the conversation (either by answering or asking questions or attempting to answer or pose questions) were required to give up a shoe for every 20 minutes they remained silent. The shoes were placed on a table off to the side. Shocking that so many gave up one shoe after 20 minutes. Fewer were willing to give the other up after the next 20 minutes. I let the last 20 minute interval slide without a penalty. The rules were arbitrary and a bit silly on purpose. I do wonder how far this obedience thing can be taken, but then I also wonder about when it crosses into a line of abusing power.

The subject today was largely anarchy, Bakunin, and Dada. I started by asking about the role of nonsense and play in the American educational system. Good responses at to what the problems are with how we are generally taught. Both positive and negative responses as well as different interpretations of “nonsense” and “play.” It was a good way to start. Then, we segued into questions of authority, power, systems of governance, etc. Huge topics and I simply couldn’t keep up with students interested in talking. I abandoned the hold the Barbie and pudding rule mainly as a way of asserting my authority and therefore conducting the discussion. If students pass the objects around they get to choose who speaks next. If I pick I get to choose, simple as that.  I should have let the object thing continue without interference. I wonder if the students would share the responsibility of distributing the conversation so one voice doesn’t dominate, or not. I need to think about that more. When given authority what do you do with it? 

The whole point of talking about these issues is to set up the conversation about Dada on Thursday. There we can take the ideas generated today and on DADADAY! And filter Ball, Tzara, and Duchamp through them. My hope is that it makes the seemingly chaotic nature of Dada make a bit more sense. Not that I want Dada to be sensible, but that there were reasons why they did what they did. I do want to address issues of beauty, skill, talent, aesthetics as they relate to concepts and cognition. For me the most interesting question today was what is the difference between aesthetic and cognitive concerns when it comes to art.  The main point being that what we are dealing with is artists largely driven by ideas with aesthetic concerns taking a back seat. In order to address this we briefly looked at Duchamp’s Mona Lisa and Serrano’s Piss Christ.

A good gathering day, but I missed the exercises and the mind games. I hope that the students could feel the difference in not starting the class this way. In order for the exercises and projects to be affective I know that we do need the occasional “gathering” day – which basically amounts to sitting around and talking about the readings and projects. The main goal, of course, is that by the end of the term the class no longer needs me to demand these activities that they simply do them on their own. It was gratifying to see at least a few students interested in the Theremin at the end of class. I mean really, who doesn’t want to play with a Theremin, the things are just about as cool as they could be.