Day Day Day

I think this is fairly typical of these blogs on courses – fairly steady – a bit inconsistent by midterm and then falls apart at the end. To catch up – We discussed the Wooster Group using the terms we have developed over the semester. This is the first time I have done this – leave the ever-growing list on the board and come back to them again and again. Notably we had a project at the beginning of class near spring break as a kind of review in which each group defined and gave examples of the terms. In discussing the Wooster Group we did the same thing, only now focused specifically on this “text.” The result is a much deeper sense of analysis of a single text than a surface reading of many. The same type of use of these ideas comes back on the final exam where students define 10 of a list of 23 terms complete with examples from our discussion and then go into detail using three of the terms to look at a project by another student. The hope is to make them both more observant as well as use the terminology and ideas.

The final projects were generally open ended. I broke them up into 3 groups of six (one group of 7 in the first section) and gave them Heiner Muller’s “Explosion of a Memory” to work with. The frame is that they can do anything they want as long as they start with this text. I see these final projects as a cap to the course – using the ideas in a more fleshed out way. Unlike an “objective” final in which I can look at “right” and “wrong” answers, this is more of a sharing of ideas. The hard part is to try and remove the focus on doing the projects for a grade. My hope is by now the students realize that I am not judging the projects in this way – that is what the take home exam questions are for. But they serve the same purpose – they pose the question “tell me what you learned in this course.”

Section 1 presented their projects on Monday. This is the early morning section so I am not really sure I ever saw all of the students fully awake. For the 1:00 pm exam time they were. I described the three projects like a bomb had gone off. Lots of sound, color, paint, violent images, garbled text, noise, etc. The first piece was a collage of a painted body, music, noise and text. Fascinating to watch and while it had a central image to focus on – the dancer who becomes ever more covered with paint, the result was much more chaotic. Sung text, feedback, movement – more of an assault on the senses than a direct appeal to sense. The second project had a similar paint derived vibe, but the paint was directed at a blank canvas (save the title of the piece) onto which paint was flung, smeared, shot from guns and dumped all while the text was being read at breakneck speed. The third piece took place behind a curtain while we were left to watch on the video screen. Like the first piece it offered a chaotic take with a central figure onto which abuse was hurled – slaps and slips of paper dumped on him rather than paint, but the result was similar. The “kidnapped” feeling to this one was odd to watch at a distance – whereas the first piece seemed empowering this one seemed disenfranchising.

The projects from the second section – offered on Tuesday – could not have been more different. More measured, contemplative, performative and less like an explosion. The first group showed a video intercut with textual elements, sounds, and images while the class wrote stream of consciousness. They then read out the new texts as we sat with out eyes closed and listened to the sound of the video. The second group brought us down to the chapel and set up a more formal arrangement as we watched them efface a projection of an Adam and Eve drawing with paint. The text was partly audible and partly garbled run through computer effects – at times taking on a demonic growl. Perfect for a space with the words “holy, holy, holy” inscribed on the beams above. They incorporated rewind sounds that affected their movement as well as Warner Brothers type sounds. The third group created an exercise in which people drew pictures of short phrases of text while not being able to see their hands or the paper. Someone sat across from them and wrote a sentence based on the drawing. All the while music played and a voice read out colors. A strange kind of telephone game. The end result was posted on the wall with the original sentences. The result was a new text with resonances of the old.

The tone between the two classes could not have been more dissimilar. Section one bursting with sound and images, section two far more introspective and language focused. They were both given the same exercises and the same course material but the end results were very different. This certainly says something about the make up of each class. This was a unique experience to have two different sections since all the other times I have taught this way it was one section only. It caused me to reflect quite a bit more in the second section about pedagogy and what worked and didn’t work.

In one respect I could easily see a more traditional teacher dismissing the chaos of the final projects as nonsense or unfocused or unstructured. In approaching the subject of postmodernism why would final projects be anything else? I could see examples of everything we discussed the whole term in these projects. The flip side of this is working to create a structure that can be chaotic, so students can try something out and see what the result is. Since chance and indeterminacy were part of what we discussed I had no problem with courting these ideas in the final projects. Beyond this, the point I tried to make to the students is that my job is to provide a framework – and open space for play – if the class is interesting it is interesting because they filled that frame with interesting things. I find this aspect so critical for the development of artists. It is the same idea that Tim Miller has worked on with our students – discovering one’s own voice. Does this happen in a week-long workshop or 15 week class – perhaps, but if not it at least suggests that it is a possibility.

I had the same feeling about the final project that I had with the final Gen Art projects – that we should have done this two weeks before the end of school and then shaped the pieces into something more polished.  This is something I wrestle with because I love the spontaneity of the projects the way that they are, but in all cases I could see how refining the ideas would make the pieces stronger. I may plan on something for this the next time I teach this way. It may be a matter of asking – what worked, what didn’t, what stayed with you? The revision part I really have not been good at. So – I’ll think about that for next time. 

Day twenty, twenty-one and twenty-two, and twenty-three: Gearing up for the end.

Actually it makes sense to discuss all four of these days at once. They were largely presentations days for me – so no projects – but also gathering days in which my intent is to prepare the students for the final piece of the term – Postdramatic Theatre, a look at the Wooster Group and the final projects. Like the disruption of master narratives project and the Fluxus project just tossing them into these ideas wouldn’t work. I feel like for these pieces they need more information up front. The “music” section of the class could probably be driven by a project, but there are quite a few ideas to deal with so it comes down to listening and discussing.

The intermediary step between Fluxus and folks like Steve Reich was a stop over in generative art. I spent time with the students talking about Brian Eno’s work, showing them his generative app Scape and discussing 77 million paintings.  Mixed in with this were moiré patterns the Flaming Lips Zaierika, and a handful of other examples. The point with all of this is to show how some of the Fluxus ideas about chance or indeterminacy can be developed into a more recognizable artistic process. Not sure I stressed that bit enough, but it was there.

The intent with this is to follow up with a listen and discussion of Steve Reich’s “Come Out.” Wonderfully generative, noisy, complex, and simple. It is so clear to see this ideas grow out of La Monte Young’s work in terms of drones and extended time frames. Listened to a bit of Reich’s Pendulum music and then where these ideas went in terms of Reich composition. Juxtaposing this with Schoenberg’s 12 tone/serialist stuff there is a clear difference between control and indeterminacy. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape #4 helps raise the idea that an indeterminate composition can sound very much like a determinate one since you can’t hear the structure. With Reich you can hear the structure – it is a meta gesture just like John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse.”

Minimalism gives way to post stuff for the next day. Students may have lots of info on this or may not, but the goal is to sort of connect the dots. A sweep from proto-punk, through punk to post-punk to post-rock to post-digital. Little more than a sampling of each. What was interesting is that compressing that sweep into a hour or so the sounds become more and more contemporary until we are left with glitch. What was nice is one of the projects today – in which groups had to do something to Gertrude Stein’s opening moment from Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights – one of the groups “granulated” the text by sprinkling scrapes of paper over it and then reading what was left uncovered. Just like the granulation of creating a glitch piece with a laptop.  

Today was about interpretation and ownership and deconstruction and The Wooster Group. Wanting an active and engaged audience to watch the video next week we spent some time talking about their technique. The tough part is that traditional theatre training – which is about half of the students in the class – is completely built on the sanctity of the script. TWG treats texts just about any way by sacred. The parallel is what happened with the Fluxus pieces in which the “author” generates an idea that is take up and then re-interpreted by the “performer.” A good place to discuss Barthes’ “Death of the Author” and “Work to Text” articles. The linkage of “work” to “text” to “performance text” to audience “text” raises a number of questions about who owns the interpretative rights. Especially when the original “text’ is put into question. The controversy surround TWG’s use (or abuse) of Miller’s The Crucible works well here. Where did he get his ideas from casts us back to earlier texts.

I finished the class by urging the students to review all of the terms and ideas we have discussed and bring this knowledge with them to watch the video of House/Lights- TWG’s take on Stein’s Dr. Faustus. Having wrestled with and seen interpretations they at least know where TWG started with this piece. I also tried to make an end run around the criticisms from the last time I showed this video – that they were all “bad” actors because of how they looked at the audience and smirked. I suggested perhaps they were playing by postmodern rules.  We shall see how the process the video. I feel like these students are much better prepared for it than the last time I taught it.

All of this is leading to the final project. I want them to see what TWG does to a text to give them permission to do the same. I plan on reminding them that they are well prepared for this assignment having executed projects on juxtaposition, movement, disrupting narrative, space and irony and indeterminacy. Plus we have been doing this type of work at the beginning of almost every class. The one piece we haven’t done yet is refine the ideas. I know that they can work quickly to create something interesting, but what happens if I ask them to work over three hours or so? I may need to consider that question the next time I teach the class – devote a few days after mid-term to projects refined and built on in class. 

Day eighteen and nineteen: Fluxus!

With the Fluxus project I have found that the students have a better idea of what is going on if we spend a day or so talking about this kind of work before the projects are due. There are projects that I really do want them to go into blind and execute as best they can and then reflect on readings afterward. This, like the master narratives project, tends to work better the other way around. LaMonte Young’s randomized lecture always raises a number of good questions. Drawing a straight line, releasing a butterfly, building a fire all presented as “musical” ideas begs a number of interesting questions about sound. Beyond this it raises questions about the role of the “artist” or “composer” or “author.” Traditional artistic forms seem to want to clamp down on meaning in ways that the Fluxus stuff destroys. It really is right in line with what we have been discussing – more a refinement of ideas than new ideas. The role that indeterminacy has played in most of what we have discussed has been there, just not brought out until now. I am sure I made too big a deal out of it, but his straight line composition really is a foundational “drone” element in western music. Hard to imagine the last 50 some odd years without it.

I love the simplicity of the Fluxus stuff – and yet the pieces can be profoundly moving – it all depends on how they are interpreted. So – we looked at a few examples of pieces drawn from the fluxusworkbook. They all suggest a range of interpretive possibilities. The rest of the class period was left to talk about the implications of these pieces. What is the role of the “originator” of the piece? What is the role of the “interpreter”? Who ultimately “owns” it? Since the pieces are often designed to blur these boundaries you end up not asking these questions. This also allows for the question of concept art – ideas VS things. The fact of the matter is that just about every student on campus is trained to interpret texts in the same manner that the Fluxus pieces demand an interpretive approach. Rather than a play or screenplay, piece of music or choreography you have an idea. It is a genesis – a starting point – that can go in any number of directions. The difference is the level of control exerted by the starting point.

This is the whole point in having students create their own pieces. I typically don’t tell them that they won’t be performing them. So I have them write out three pieces – one sculptural, one musical, and one performative – without specifying which one – then we pool them and draw cards. In creating the piece students have an idea, an intention, a direction but that may or may not be seen by the person who now has the card. It is a simple way of giving up control. The students present/perform the pieces one at a time and only after the presentation do they read the card. The object is to create in the “composer” the role of watcher – of not knowing what will come next. For students trained to be specific in their choices this is often a different experience. But, it leaves room for surprises – for watching in a way that artists typically don’t watch their own work.

The last project was to be presented as an object or image – away from the creator – so they could reflect on it as others do. With these Fluxus pieces the work is taken completely away from the creator. The results are always interesting. The hard part is to make connections to arts training that is based in deliberate choices. I find the indeterminate quality liberating in that it often takes me to places I would not go otherwise. The same impulse behind using generative sound programs to create music. I need to follow this up with more examples so that the Fluxus state of mind doesn’t seem totally isolated. We will probably deal more specifically with generative art in the next class so that the examples of indeterminacy can be widened to include just about every artform. I suspect Eno will play a large role in that conversation. Having used this sequence last year it feels very different in this class primarily because of the timing – later in the term – as well as the growing list of terminology with which to address the ideas. Its hard to see what each project will become in advance. But that is the fun part. I get to watch along side of the students. 

Day Sixteen and Seventeen: The built in contradiction

It makes sense to discuss these tow days together – basically a continuation of the ideas. We were able to have a good chat about the museum projects in presentation class period so we used Tuesday as a kind of catch all day. I love these open discussion days in the syllabus. They are useful if we need more time to discuss the projects. If not, we can expand on ideas in that space. So – a couple of things were covered. As a project students drew terms out of a bag and then grouped up to define them and provide examples from readings, discussion, projects, or new examples. We then moved to the word cloud created from all of the definitions of postmodernism. I love these things as a quick read on a large amount of info. We then discussed what terms caught their eye.

The rest of the class was used to discuss a few more ideas from the Lyotard reading –namely the ideas of aesthetics, beauty, rules, and change. It was an opportunity to bring in a handful of examples to discuss. Serrano’s Piss Christ was very useful. It is such a wonderful picture – works according to all the standards for “good” composition. But then it’s a picture of a crucifix in urine. So a useful picture to talk about what ideas have lasted and what has changed. This was grounded in a brief discussion of Eco’s Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. The question is what we replace “godliness” with in the aesthetic criteria to evaluate works from today. We ended exploring some of Rachael Whiteread’s casting pieces with the question “Is there an objective criteria with which to judge ‘good’ postmodernism.”?

Thursday was dedicated to discussing postmodern architecture and so I brought the Legos out again. This time students could work alone or in groups to create a representation of the idea of “absence.” Some great answers. I was also pleased that when asked each student had clear and perceptive ideas about the reading. Unlike last year where I felt we had peeked at the break and then couldn’t get the energy back I feel like we are still moving forward. The goal is to do enough exercises, enough projects, pack as many postmodern ideas into the students heads that when we form groups for the final projects they can just go. I feel like we have been prepping the ground for those projects all term. It will be interesting to see what happens. Especially since the students ability to produce some thoughtful and interesting pieces in 10-15 minutes has been refined over the past 10 weeks or so. Given 3 hours of class time my hope is they can produce some amazing stuff.

So after explaining why I use architecture to discuss ideas, plays, structure, etc we took a look at some of the terms and ideas in the Jencks and Venturi articles. The ideas that they develop are right in line with what we have been discussing all term – disharmonious harmony, difficulty whole, asymmetrical symmetry. The built in contradiction. The difference here is that it is generally easier to see. One look at Ghery’s House and the idea of a difficult whole becomes clear. It looks like a jumble, but beyond that has a wonderful sense of structure. Angles, materials, open space, contained space were all chosen for a reason. Amidst the seeming disjunction is a kind of order.

The notion of the difficult whole was countered with the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk – or the master art work. Wagner’s ideas are built on a unity of exclusion – things that don’t fit a re jettisoned. Reaching for a more contemporary metaphor we discussed Chorus Line. In order to fit into the chorus line each dancer needs to be unique, but give up a little of that uniqueness to form a unit. Whereas this idea requires elements in the structure to give up something in order to be included in the whole the idea of the difficult whole is built on tension. It is also build on showing the seems – like some kind of Frankenstein monster, but without the pitchforks and torches.

Al in all two sort of gathering days. Students were given their next assignment – the Fluxus assignment – with the understanding that we will be talking about Fluxus next week before their project is due. The goal with this, as with watching the Holy Grail and reading “Lost in the Funhouse” prior to the master narratives project, is to give the students a bit of a background in the subject before the project is due. We are inexorably heading toward the Postdramatic Theatre project, which draws on all of the other projects – objects, movement, text, space, etc. 

Day Fourteen: The rules of what will have been done

In teaching the dissonance class last year I felt like the class peeked with the Fluxus projects. The energy and ideas where there and we were moving forward. Then spring break came and I didn’t feel like we ever recaptured the momentum. So, with this class I decided to slow the pace down a bit and hold off on the Fluxus project until about the three quarter mark of the term. That has meant that a few days felt like we were kind of treading water, but I did feel that this past week after the break it was worth it. Two excellent classes with two completely different trajectories. On Tuesday we started by talking about fixing issues with the class. We discussed more feedback on the portfolios. One thing I tried to make clear is that I have deliberately not commented on projects in class or on the portfolio entries. The point was to do them, get comfortable sharing these ideas, and then build on them. At that point I can offer more specific feedback.

Working toward a discussion of the Lyotard reading I had each student identify one thing that struck them about the article. I find it frustrating that in the first section about 1/3^rd did not complete the 9 page reading. This always puts more of a burden on those that did read it. The second section had nearly 100% of the students doing the reading and more than ready to discuss this. It is almost impossible to describe how different these two sections have become. There is good work going on in both sections – some amazing work actually, but the level of engagement with the ideas and the level of conversation is not the same. It may be a combination of the hour the class is offered, the students, or possibly my approach to one section after having taught another. For classes like this I really need to find a way to only have one section.

So we started the class with an exercise building on Lyotard’s idea of impossible ideas made visible by the avant-garde. So I broke the students up into four groups, told them to decide on an abstract idea or concept and the build that concept in Legos. What I love about Legos is the nostalgia factor – plus they are just incredibly fun to play with. But beyond this students are forced to encounter the limitations of the medium for representing ideas. The solutions need to be clever – there is just no way around it. In assigning this exercise I really hadn’t seen the implications for the Lyotard reading beyond the point made above. As the first section was working on the project it dawned on me that Lyotard faced a similar issue in discussing postmodernism. Here is was trying to articulate a complex, double coded, non-settling down idea with the language of philosophy. A straight forward reading is impossible due to the limitations of the medium. As a number of the students pointed out – his language is dense, confusing, loopy, etc. The project gave us a way to discuss why he would choose to write that way.

What I like about  Lyotard is his point near the end of the essay that “the rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for. The artist and the writer, then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done.” This provided ample opportunity to discuss the avant-garde (Duchamp, Cage, Malevich) and to talk about the “rules of art.” On the one hand it is easy to say that there are no rules to art, and yet to say that at an arts conservatory is another thing. What are the students here to learn if not the rules of artmaking? Some of this progressed with a discussion of whether a work of art (or a work of philosophy) should make sense. Sensemaking in and of itself becomes a defining rule-like characteristic. The hard part is what you do when your predecessors have broken all of the rules. This question has become a much larger part of this class than I had intended, but it is a necessary one. We can never understand the postmodern unless we discuss what came before it.

The final gesture of this day was to ask the students to reflect on the ideas generated by their fall term class Self, Society, and Cosmos and to think about what has changed in the modern era and what has remained the same. Generally the response matched the one from last year, that the search for meaning or humanity or whatever has remained the same, but the forms used in that search have changed.  There is still much left to explore with that response. 

Day Thirteen: Creative Disobedience

In thinking back over the projects there was a lot of interesting material offered. Some clever re-tellings of fairy tales that illuminated the objectification, voyeurism, eroticism, etc that generally goes unacknowledged because these are stories for “children.” After finishing up the projects we discussed the idea of master narratives and how coercive they can be, mainly because we don’t pay attention to them. Things like hero stories or quest narratives, coming of age stories, conflict stories, etc all suggest a specific arc to the narrative, but one that does not draw attention to itself. The re-telling of the fairy tales often tipped the narrative hand to how the story was being told. Having wrestled with what to do with the stories and then seen 18 different versions we were ready to dive into this topic.

As I explained in class today, executing the projects often provides the student with space to learn about the subject. The presentation, then becomes a documentation of that process. It is not that the presentation is irrelevant, but that the thinking part is done and now we get to re-think these projects in conjunction with a host of solutions. I feel that they get the notion of master narratives and get the coercive structure of things like fairy tales much better having torn one apart. The conversation did ramble a bit from idea to idea – largely because that was how I tried to structure it, but it meant taking a look at the same issue from a number of different sides. It was also another opportunity to draw on some of the material presented in our book. So we breifly exploring the idea of reflexivity, of Barthes’ notion of naturalization, of Foucault’s questions of power. Referencing the projects become the grounding point for these ideas.

I do need to work on talking about the projects more directly. I often reference a handful of them because they provide useful examples for the discussion, but I need to do a better job of providing feedback – not to each student individually, but to the group as a whole. By asking the students to delve more deeply into the terminology we have discussed in their e-portfolio write ups of this project my hope is that I can return to the projects with more of a specific focus. As I was thinking back over them it dawned on me that many of them offer very clear examples of deconstruction – so I will need to weave this into our conversation about the Wooster Group and re-visit the re-tellings again later in the term.

I asked the students for feedback on how they thought the course was going so far. Some good points and ideas – the main ones being to offer more feedback on the projects and portfolio entries and to work harder to involve everyone in the discussion. I go back and forth on the discussions since I typically don’t like to call on students unless they offer to be called on. It just never works out. But I will think about ways to develop this conversation across a broader spectrum of students.  The projects and portfolios pose a more interesting problem. I deliberately don’t comment too much on the first few projects – we use them as examples, but I feel if I offer too much criticism or too much observation or commentary then I am directing the student rather than allowing the student’s impulses to direct them. Four projects in students have begun to develop a vocabulary, have allowed personal passions and interests and ideas to animate these open-ended projects. At that point I feel like I can begin to offer more feedback – to suggest paths of development, refinement to the ideas. I don’t believe that I have done a good job of this with past project driven courses, but I will work to offer this type of feedback this term and see what happens. 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/07/07/the-educational-value-of-creative-disobedience/

Day eleven and twelve: students who actively wrestled with the question and created something on their own probably got more out of the exercise than students that simply found someone else’s example of postmodernism

Ahh – I hate falling behind in keeping up with this blog. OK – so the subject for last class was a discussion of Holy Grail and John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse,” and Eco’s Postscript essay on irony. Unfortunately with the movie and then a discussion day following it we have gotten out of the warm up and exercise rhythm. I suspect we won’t get back to it until we discuss the Master Narrative projects on Thursday. I find the discussion days crucial to how the course progresses. Projects and examples are great, but there needs to be space to analyzes them also. I really don’t want to resort to things like quizzes and tests so we start these days with students talking about one thing that caught their eye in the articles to be read for today. I learned the lesson of getting them away from their books the first time we did this – it was far too easy to just thumb through the reading and randomly pull something out on the spot. I am disappointed when students do not do the reading – which means that their understanding of the discussion is significantly affected. On the other hand I am always impressed when students bring in a list of ideas from the readings.

The main point of the discussion was to establish a number of useful postmodern ideas – things like metafiction, intertext, and double coding. The Barth short story and the film are great examples of these ideas. I am struck by the fact that we often do not pay enough attention to how a story is told. We tend to get caught up in what is being told instead. The Funhouse and Grail examples fragment the narrative and draw attention to construction in such a way that it is hard to ignore the structure. Sowing doubt in the role of the narrator or storyteller is a clear indication that something different is happening in these stories.

All of this was designed to be inspirational material for the project due today. Students were asked to draw on the growing list of postmodern terms and ideas that we have been developing and use them to change, alter, deconstruct, re-tell a fairy tale. A number of students took this suggestion literally and re-told familiar tales. This offered a nice collision typically between the rather antiquated values and structure of the stories and contemporary material added to or filtering the stories. Some took it as a challenge to create alternative ways of exploring these stories – power points with a great deal of information packed into them, videos, boxes to open up and explore, performance art, and mashups. I do struggle with courses like this not to grade or elevate “good” projects at the expense of “poor” projects, but that dynamic does exist – you can feel it during the presentations. Some students simply develop the ideas more fully than others.

The difficult part with this is that the projects exist as a challenge on a couple of levels. The first one is simply coming up with an answer to the question, but beyond that it involves the public display of the answer. This structure of the course is designed to create an environment that is not just teacher/student centered, but class or group centered. My hope is that students can see the more developed answers and then aspire to do something similar with the next project. If that works or not remains to be seen. I do need to mention in class on Thursday that students who actively wrestled with the question and created something on their own probably got more out of the exercise than students that simply found someone else’s example of postmodernism. Just pressing play is not the same as assembling something.

The next step to this is to get the students to begin weaving the ideas we have been discussing into their write-up of their projects. The first three I really only expected descriptions – the last four I expect analysis. Whereas the first three responses I was concerned if they had been posted. The remaining responses I will offer more specific criticism.

I felt that the Dissonance class that I taught last year had peaked too soon. We ended up exploring the ideas of indeterminacy right before spring break and couldn’t get the momentum back.  I have deliberately slowed the pace of this class down to allow the elements to come together later in the term. After the break we need to do a great deal more exercises and in-class projects. The goal is to lead up to the final project where all of these pieces are pulled together.