First week – Day one and day two:

It is really fantastic to be back in the WW5 gym for this class – where I taught it last in 2015 (7 years ago?) Some things about the space have changed, but it’s great to have an open room to work in. The first class was largely dedicated to going over the syllabus, requirements, etc – and with this class trying to sort out those that want to play with this material and those that don’t. I’m trying to avoid any surprises about the structure. The icebreaker game this time round was based on the surrealist idea of question and answer – where the two don’t have to match. My initial intent was to have students writs down a question and an answer on separate index cards and then shuffle and distribute them, but in covid-times that didn’t seem like a great idea. I hope we can resolve this before Fluxus day. Students wrote them down and we circled the room posing questions with indeterminate answers. Then on to the Self, Society, and Cosmos ideas – good list of what students remembered from this class with the 8:30 section being a bit more awake than the 10 – which always seems to happen. This is why last time we started with stretching and whatnot – I may lean back into that as the term progresses. Then I assigned the first project due next week – I love this project which has students presenting three different types of time. Always interesting to see what they come up with. I’ve reminded them that the question is deliberately vague since I am not looking for any specific answers, just how they respond to the prompt. Day two was about discussing traditional aesthetics and so we started with each person showing/discussing something they find “beautiful.” It was interesting to see the difference in the sections with 8:30 leaning a bit more into process – complexity, layers, catharsis, formal elements and 10:00 a bit more on effect – mood, environment, impact. I always feel like benefit from this conversation in ways the students don’t so shared a bit of the 8:30 with the 10 and will do the inverse on Tuesday. The rest of the class was about discussing aesthetics, rules, patterns, cultural ideas, etc with regards to art-making and art-viewing. The examples students provided offer great detail for this conversation. I’ve tried to give them a glimpse of where we are headed – mainly as an extension of figuring out who wants to play with these ideas and who doesn’t. The first week can never really be more than exposition, but we’ve already played a game and students presented ideas – so we are in good shape. I’m looking forward to the first projects on Tuesday.