Dissonance Day Six: In which I see how curious the students are

On a whim I dragged the Kaos Pad and amplifier into the space today. I like the sound, and it has been a while since I tinkered with it. So it was making bleeps and bloops and whatnot as the students entered the space. I kept messing with it and walking away. I was curious to see if anyone would come take a look. Surprisingly no one did. I didn’t really expect them to start messing with it, but not even a glance, not a walk up, nothing. Hmmmm. When I chastised them about it – probably not the best way to start the class – the response was – “are we allowed to touch it?” The American educational system – or culture – or whatever – has done a fine job of discipline. I know with a room full of 6-10 year olds they would have been all over this thing. So the question is – how do I get college students – sleepy, sleep deprived, early morning college students to have the curiosity of a 9 year old? Hmmmm. Part of that question seems to reside in getting rid of the question of what is and isn’t allowed. The next step, much more difficult, is to abolish the notion of good and bad. But we have 10 more weeks to get there.

I do find that I look forward to these classes. I like the rhythm of the stretching and brain exercise to start. Rather than jumping right into the class material with no transition, this process seems to ease us into it. It is a nice kind of liminal zone between no class and class. While I might not always employ the physical and mental I can see developing some kind of starting process for all of my classes in the future.

The objective today was to link the time projects with Bergson’s ideas on duration. A number of the views expressed on time – its democratic nature treating everyone the same, its subjectivity, its inevitability, all worked well to lead into Bergson. This, of course, was the reason for the time project in the first place. I could have just said “set aside an hour of your day (or less) and contemplate the nature of time,” but it is hard to see that and even harder to get others to see these ideas. The projects externalized these ideas so we could begin to reflect upon them as a group. The input from the class – really quite a large percentage of the class – just north of 50% of the students in attendance today (typically it is more like 30%) – was excellent. So what I end up struggling with is being fascinated by all of these ideas and wanting to get through the material I have planned for today so that we are ready to discuss the Futurists next Tuesday. I do attempt to make links between the discussion points and the reading and then, far too often, fall back into teacher mode and simply explain or list ideas. Today the “lecture” portion keyed off of Bergson’s notion of duration, simultaneity, and dynamism – all crucial for understanding Marinetti and his merry band of Futurists.

The segue to the Jarry material was a bit awkward – keying off of a discussion of logic – but it did get us to Pataphysics. The question, as always, is how many did the reading. Students get more out of the discussion if they some idea what I am talking about. But Pataphysics lead to a number of interesting ideas raised by the students – particularly along the lines of anarchy – which lead to a discussion of rules – which lead back to the Kaos Pad. This was an unintentional loop – but worked really well for where we are headed. It also sets the groundwork for Bakunin and for Dada. What I need to work toward in the next class is weaving back in some of the Self, Society, and Cosmos ideas and the four main questions for the Paths to the Present classes. But this all sets us up well for the next class. If part of the Futurist’s desire was, like Jarry, to shake people out of there complacency then the question of how to get college students to approach this material like 9-year-olds fits perfectly well. Its almost like somebody actually planned this to happen with the course material. Hmmmmmm.

Dissonance Day Five: In which we discuss aesthetics and the first projects

I must say that I do like starting class by stretching and getting our blood flowing, but I execute it with a kind self-consciousness. I wonder if that will dissipate or remain for the whole term. The word games/brain teaser stuff I enjoy also but do less self-consciously. What I like about these exercises is the communal aspect – well that and getting students up out of their chairs first thing. It is so easy just to tune out and be disengaged. I don’t assume that starting this way automatically engages, but it at least provides a different rhythm from a more traditional academic class.

Delightful conversation today. One of those days where I get fascinated by the comments and questions raised by the students and wrestle with staying on the track I had pre-planned. Clearly we could talk about art and beauty – well – forever – but the objective was to use this conversation as a way to swing back to the first projects on time. The aesthetic issues we will return to again and again over the course of the entire term, but I wanted to raise certain questions about the first projects. The hope is that these questions usher us into the discussion of Bergson and the Futurists. On the surface the projects are an answer to a question – there was no presumption that students would bring in works of art, and certainly no presumption that they would be beautiful or polished or complete works of art, and yet many of them were. I wondered if this would be the case had I assigned this project to a group of chemistry majors or history majors or English majors. Do the works “become” art (or are viewed as art) simply because they were created by art students in a class taught at an art school. Or do we apply other criteria to them?  

I find this an interesting question not just because it raises the issue of intent, but also of reception. It implies the spectator in the work as much as the artist. This is something we will deal with more specifically when we get to the Gen Art section, but it will probably also inform our discussion of Dada and Futurism. A number of students raised the question of meaning – is it in the work of art or suspended between art-work and audience? A wonderful philosophical question that we will tackle throughout the term, but perhaps engaged by the Situationists in the most visible manner.

While we did not get to the discussion of “good” art and “bad” art – the criteria based on aesthetic study, tradition, habit, etc - we did wander close to the topic. I had wanted to raise the question of aesthetics in relation to the first projects. Not only if they can be considered works of art, but can they be considered “good’ works of art. The whole reason, of course, to employ the strawman issue of “good” and “bad” is to attempt to get beyond the two exclusive categories and move toward the idea of the continuum. There is certainly time for this conversation and I do not expect that as we move from project to project that they will inevitably be lost to time. The linkages and comparisons and contrasts between each project should yield some interesting discussion points.

The blogs are such a useful tool, primarily for students that took the time to document their process. Once we have seen the work this fills in many of the questions we may have about them, about certain choices or end results. The process itself stands out, connected to, but also independent of the final project. If part of the assumption of this approach to teaching is to start with what the students know, then asking questions about their intent or process and then making links to the ideas and concepts is a much simpler task than leaping directly to the abstract. Having executed the projects each student has a concrete understanding of having to express time in a number of different ways. I am curious to see what connections can be made between the projects and Bergson’s ideas on duration. The next step then is to make the connection to the Futurists. Which has already begun. (I am debating whether to include student names in this blog – but for now I will just use letters to abbreviate). In discussing the complacency of the audience SH made a great connection to the Futurist intent to get a rise out of the audience – to provoke them in some way to have a response that was not pre-programmed. I am anxious to get to the discussion of this process next Tuesday.

Dissonance Day Four - the first projects

I have to say that I was delighted with the first projects. The assignment was to focus on “time” as a subject and follow these rules:

You have a container to fill.

The size of the container is one minute.

Anything outside one minute will be considered outside the container.

You must fill the container with three different types of time.

The range of responses to this prompt were wonderful. I asked that the students not introduce the projects, but simply present them. The hope was that we would not be prejudiced to look for certain things, but see in the projects perhaps thing unintended by the creator. It was interesting that after the initial hesitation to start there seemed to be avalanche of people wanting to present next – either out of the excitement of sharing or just to get it over with. Some were performative – using a student or students in the piece, some were sculptural, gestural, textual, filmic, etc. Some relied on an audience, some did not. Some were loud, some messy, some quiet and contemplative. In discussing the project briefly after the presentations a number of students said that they had wrestled with what to choose. They were struck by a number of options, but had little time to mull them over. This is kind of planned into the pieces – which is why I gave them only about 48 hours to work on the question.

I liked the roughness of them – some were more polished than others, but the quality that these were ideas just formed and corralled together for the purpose of the presentation focuses more on process than product. I suspect if students were given the time to revise these pieces they might see more in them or magnify certain aspects of them. Perhaps some ideas will carry over into later projects.

What struck me about the projects as a whole is the sort of idiosyncratic quality displayed, like there was a kind of private vocabulary at work in each piece with deeper meanings built in. I would be curious to discuss this more on Tuesday. The other part of why I didn’t want introductions is because of the need to explain this private symbolism. But even if as an audience we are not completely aware of all facets of each piece we still get something out of them. They can be moving or funny or terrifying while still on another level masking more complex ideas. While we can discuss this in class, with 30 students it may be difficult to get to all of these depths. My hope is that is the purpose served by the blogs. Here students can go into more detail on intent and outcome. But I do realize that some will be more detail oriented than others – so questions in class may be able to draw some of this out.

Like the Gen Art class I was really struck by the cleverness and inventiveness of the answers to a complex question. One of the things that I like about open-ended questions is that there is plenty of room for a multitude of ideas. Unlike an assignment where I may be looking for a specific answer or a range of answers presented in a specific format, these questions enable the students to draw ideas out of their own experiences. They all know about time, but they all experience it differently. I’m looking forward to the discussion on Tuesday.

Dissonance Day Three

Today Debbie Frezell started us off with a five minute set of “get the blood flowing and wake-up” exercises. A wonderful way to start the day. My hope is that it will becomes a routine that we look forward to each Tuesday and Thursday. Since we had quite a bit to do today we ended up following the physical warm-up with a short mental one – a game of telephone with 30 people. Lots of fun – like 30 person babelizer.  I’m looking forward to using some of the Olipo exercises as we get farther into the term.

I acknowledge that this is an odd way to start each class. I know that a number of the students are uncomfortable with this, but it does serve two very distinct purposes. One) it wakes everyone up and two) provides a group activity in a class that is largely fragmented. Right now it is basically my imposition on the class, but I do want to give it a few weeks before I ask their take on it. It reminds me of Zakiya’s class in grad school. One of those impactful classes that I keep reaching back towards. Well that and the link to the Bauhaus stuff.

In addition to reading two articles on aesthetics – one by Kristeller that sort of summed up the general idea of aesthetics and one by Leo Tolstoy – the students were instructed to bring in something beautiful to share. One by one students shared what they had brought. Music, film clips, painting, poems, movement, photographs, architecture, digital media, etc. A wide range of material. Given the number of students in the class we did not have time for a discussion afterwards. But – I think this might work out well since the next class they present their first projects on simultaneity. The assignment is basically to fill one minute with three different types of time.  I have no idea what they will bring in on Thursday, but I am interested to see the results. Since there is a day set aside after the projects to discuss them we can weave back to the aesthetics discussion – but now with the additional ideas developed by the projects. 

I was struck by a few things as students shared their objects of “beauty.” The need to explain why this piece is important on a personal level. I hadn’t really thought of that when I gave the assignment, but it makes perfect sense.  Things we find beautiful have deep meaning for us. In fact, had I shared the Avro Part piece I brought in I doubt I would have been able to make it through the whole song without tearing up. So yes, that eye of the beholder thing does work, but I was also struck by what seemed to draw the pieces together. Many (including my own example) were tinged with sadness or melancholy.  I wonder about that – as we find things meaningful that are beautiful because they strike a chord deep within us. This seems to reinforce Tolstoy’s point that “there is and can be no explanation of why one thing pleases one [person] and displeases another, or vice versa.” But I do wonder if in a very general sense the personal connection has some root similar between individuals. Certainly something we can discuss next Tuesday.

Dissonance Day Two

The students entered to a Mark Rothko image side-by-side with a Robert Rauschenberg while Fennez’s Endless Summer played. Not as grating as the first day – still static, but nice soothing static.  I find it interesting that the immediate action upon entering is to find a place to sit. I had to remind them that we would be getting up in a few minutes and not to get too comfy. We circled up and did a few stretches. Two contributions from students – which is nice. It would be great to develop a 3 minute routine that we all did every day before class. Some of it needs to be more aerobic though since part of the job is to get the blood flowing. The stretching gave way to tongue-twisters. Three great ones. I like that these are funny and often hard to concentrate on – they trip up both the tongue and the mind. Next rather than a game each person – in whatever order they chose – introduced themselves, told us why they were here at UNCSA, and shared something interesting about themselves. Yes – very summer camp like, but the task was to start to figure out who each person is and start to memorize names.  I know that some students are more conformable with this than others. It is an attempt to get everyone over that unfamiliar feeling and the fear of talking in front of 30 other people. Some of the folks that would rather remain silent have fantastic things to share and add to the class. We need to find a way to get that material out in the open.

I didn’t really want to fall into teacher/student mode after this – me at the head of the class, them passively sitting and all facing me. But, there were things we needed to cover that could only be done this way. I did make a point of talking a bit about space in that the traditional educational space suppose that I have answers and that students look to me for those. Once we get into the projects and fragment the space that should go away a bit. We started with the P2P site material, specifically by discussing modernism and postmodernism. The students had some great insight into differences between them. One main point is that after viewing the site we are no closer to concrete definitions, but now have a collection of ideas and themes we can explore.

I posed the Greenberg idea of modernism as using the discipline to critique the discipline and talks about art about art – Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Malevich’s White on White. From there to Schoenberg and the idea of 12-tone or serialist music and Philip Glass’s comment that “this music is much more interesting than it sounds” – suggesting a complex structure, but not anything you could hum. Cage’s 4’33” becomes the end of the line going into silence. Brecht, Pirandello, Thornton Wilder all offer theatre about theatre ideas. James Joyce and Gertrude Stein – writing about writing, etc. the inverse of this id Eco’s notion that the avant-garde moves toward a metalanguage and impossible texts. When you get to blank canvases, silent compositions, the empty page, the empty stage – where do you go?

This helped us move into postmodernism – and we used the Rothko and Rauschenberg as a place to start. Hard to define these terms specifically, but by moving around them a few ideas were established that we will be able to return to throughout the term. The other material listed on the site – the concentration camp, the grid, uncertainty, what is meant by “the people” sparked a great conversation about power, control, rules, education, etc. the modernist notion that rules and order can be useful gives way to internment and unlivable modernist spaces. I really need to show a clip from Brazil where the modernist dream housing blocks have degenerated into postmodern squall. The Occupy movement also became a nice connection to this - postmodern in its construction with no central authority or ideas – as opposed to the more modernist tea party. Mike’s comments on the grid offer a nice way to talk about structure and order, but also how people can be marginalized by this order also. The internet came up as a contemporary postmodern idea – un controlled and wide open (at least for now). We ended with Betsy’s list of themes connected to mod/post and linked it back to the continuum idea that things may be closer to one idea than another. In some sense it seemed like we were rambling, but ideas were being connected for later use. I do need to explain that this type of conversation is modeling a type of behavior – of making connections and links that I expect the students to begin to do for themselves over the course of the term.

Next class we talk about aesthetics and beauty – students are instructed to being in beautiful things to share. My hope is that it will not be so “teacher” centered.  

Dissonance Day One

So the students entered the gym space to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music pumped through the speakers while glitch images scrolled on the screen. Those that listened closely would also hear DJ Shadow mixed in from the laptop – but it was subtle. I probably spent far too long and far too much energy explaining why students should consider dropping the class. Yes, there are too many people for the project-based structure (ideal is 15-20 and the courses is right around 30 now), but mainly I wanted the students to know the rules of the game. They need to decide if they want to play or not.  In order for this type of class to work students need to be willing to dive in to the projects and not worry too much about success or failure, not worry too much about perfecting something, but allowing the project prompts to function as a place to start a process. The end result is not nearly as important as what questions they ask and the journey to the presentation. It’s a tough sell at an art school seemingly founded on polishing all artworks to a high gloss. It is also a gesture that goes against the grain of most of the education in this country that supposes an answer to a posed question. What I love about the project prompts is that they are questions to which I do not know the answer – so there are no right or wrong answers only answers.

After my harangue we formed a circle to stretch a bit. I am probably equally uncomfortable with this as the students are – but I do think it is an important addition to how we start the class each time – especially on project or exercise days. I was delighted that one of the students made the connection to the Bauhaus. I need to go back to Itten’s book periodically for more ideas. To just do this and then sit back down seems like a waist – but we will figure it out. We then played the lovely “what is this?” game – in which you take a seemingly banal object – in this case a drum stick – and see what potential it has for action, sound, or description. The game is less about what it is and more about what it could be. The idea is to jump start brains after we jump start bodies. I need to really sit down and create a list of these games. It would be nice if students would suggest some too. Perhaps we will get to that point.

The discussion that followed was about the Self, Society, and Cosmos class (in some cases Foundations) and what the students remembered – what ideas stuck with them. This was a great way to start – especially since I need to re-think this class and tie it into the Paths to the Present sequences. I am a firm believer that there was some kind of paradigm shift in the late sixties that ushered in the “age of postmodernism,” but what I was struck by are the connections we could make between modernism and postmodernism through the S,S, & C material. If part of why humans gravitate toward developing myths, storytelling, art, and other forms of expression is to help define what it means to be human then all historical eras deal with these ideas. The difference is what questions are asked, what elements are valued, and what rules or criteria emerge. The search is the same, the path different. When I first read about Hugo Ball and his initial impact on Dada I didn’t quite understand why after making strange and explosive art he would retreat to the mountains of Switzerland and spend his remaining days as a Catholic mystic. On the surface the two gestures seem very different, but underneath they offer the same questing, longing, yearning of meaning, for understanding, for process.

I must say I was delighted with the first class. It seemed like a good way of kicking the term off. I am trying to hang on to the Gen Art structure since I thought it was a successful model for this type of class. I do miss having Bob in class with me though. It is always nice to have someone to talk through the class and strategize for the next one. I guess that this blog will have to serve that purpose.