Stein to Stein:

Discussing the structure of Stein’s Dr. Faustus, we ended up on the third floor of the library so we could look out the window. This worked well to establish Stein’s notion of theatre as landscape. Although Dr. Faustus is one of her more narrative pieces, it does have a layered structure that loops back on itself, which works with the landscape idea. A good conversation. I have been constantly impressed with the charity that a number of students show these seemingly impenetrable texts. Some great observations and ideas shared about what Stein wrote.

The difficult listening hour went well – as well as it could. I realize that listening to Reich’s “Come Out” can be an ordeal for some. But the comments about the sound and how they engaged with it make those 13 minutes well worth it. I wish we had time to listed to the whole of Alvin Lucier’s “I am Sitting in a Room” and Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops,” but alas 80 minutes goes by far too fast. Given the move from spring term to fall I lost 2 ½ weeks of class and so condensed the two listening days into one. We lost post-punk, but got to sample some glitch.

The hypertext/hypermedia project based on the Stein text was really wonderful. So many lovely complex and deeply thought out projects. As a number of students noted, the interactive quality of many of these pieces was quite evident. There was also a searching or unearthing quality this time round. The last time I taught this class these projects seemed a bit more aggressive rather than welcoming. Same material, two totally different groups of students.

Getting to this point in the term when the students are comfortable taking risks and creating some engaging and thoughtful projects is always the goal. I do doubt this as we go through the process, but one of the things I have to remember is how classes like this were put together with trial and error and the goal of skilling the students up for the end of the term. It means a piece at a time until the pieces start to cohere. I was delighted that they did on this project.

The follow up conversation was a bit low energy – but there is always a lull after project days and certainly always a lull as we reach the remaining weeks of the term. I had them do image and text exquisite corpse today and put the two together. Never done that before. Interesting to hear those fragmented speeches in relation to the fragmented images. I then chatted a bit about sampling and we listened to some plunderphonics, rap, and mash-up. This is the environment they have grown up in so it should feel like home, but hopefully a bit defamiliarized in the sense that they have more background on it now.

Two project ideas: Record a 2 year-old telling a story and then animate it or stage it. Bailey’s notion of postmodernism as a junk drawer – make a project out of the contents of a junk drawer.

On to the Wooster Group and then final projects and then we can call it a term.