I'm going to really jam the blog up today.
Errant thoughts I want to get down, some form Wed. some from other conversations.
Images:
Dennis (hey, if you get on, will you edit this where I get it wrong) came up with this really amazing image from some reading he's been doing- a mushroom cloud transformed into mushrooms or mushroom spores flying off to germinate. Why? Turns out certain kinds of mushrooms can grow in extremely toxic, like oil spill/Chernobyl/Mexico City toxic, environments and a.) still be totally edible, and b.) transform that environment into something neutral or even benficial as a by-product of their growth. Thus, mushroom cloud, something totally negative, to mushroom, something very positive. Personally, I like how kind of silly it is, because it's disarming. I would love to find a way to present this that is productive in the piece.
I'm really obsessed with this image of scientists (i.e. people in lab coats) dancing around an ice object. Dennis and/or Cara had the variation of dancing around fire, which somehow got on to dancing on an island of ice worshipping a fire in the center that is melting the ice. Trying to think of ways to enact this live and in video, showing the inversion. Possibilities included shrinking the stage or merely the space the dancers used, actually coralling the audience in- all in reference to shrinking land mass predicted by climatology. The implications of the image for me are: the obvious fact that the extent to which science has contributed to the technologization of culture makes them culpable for the the environmental disaster, and the way in which certain of these scientists are now doing this very public shaman dance around the ice caps, telling us to watch them melt and to think about forces in the sky and to repent. All of this follows on points Cara and others have made about how the science stands at the ready to act just like the old eschatology of religion (Nao put it like this: We had the religious "facts" and now science just replaces each one of those facts with their "facts").
Still having trouble generating good solid images of the end of the world: I guess I'm just not that kind of poet.
On the question-generating discussion. One of the compositional methods we've decided on is to use questions asked of the audience to transition them from one focus of attention to another. Cara proposed a grammar like this:
"If you drove here tonight, look to your left." At which point they would see a segment of dance, or a video clip. Our further discussion was that it would be dumb to use that as an opportunity to hit them over the head with images of tail pipes. So the question of how to make that moment useful to the audience is still floating.
Other questions:
The "which is your science/which is your clock question" grabs me. The grammatical variation coule be: "If you count the seconds until our Sun goes supernova, look up". I'm actually starting to feel a lot of poetic potential in that grammar ("If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands").
anyways, still in the works of compiling a master list. If you're working on a segment, dance or otherwise, and know you need a transition, you could shoot ideas or assignments out to the group. In the meantime, I'll codify all the ones I've got form notes and generate a few more.
that's it for a bit, see you all Sunday at 2pm.
Errant thoughts I want to get down, some form Wed. some from other conversations.
Images:
Dennis (hey, if you get on, will you edit this where I get it wrong) came up with this really amazing image from some reading he's been doing- a mushroom cloud transformed into mushrooms or mushroom spores flying off to germinate. Why? Turns out certain kinds of mushrooms can grow in extremely toxic, like oil spill/Chernobyl/Mexico City toxic, environments and a.) still be totally edible, and b.) transform that environment into something neutral or even benficial as a by-product of their growth. Thus, mushroom cloud, something totally negative, to mushroom, something very positive. Personally, I like how kind of silly it is, because it's disarming. I would love to find a way to present this that is productive in the piece.
I'm really obsessed with this image of scientists (i.e. people in lab coats) dancing around an ice object. Dennis and/or Cara had the variation of dancing around fire, which somehow got on to dancing on an island of ice worshipping a fire in the center that is melting the ice. Trying to think of ways to enact this live and in video, showing the inversion. Possibilities included shrinking the stage or merely the space the dancers used, actually coralling the audience in- all in reference to shrinking land mass predicted by climatology. The implications of the image for me are: the obvious fact that the extent to which science has contributed to the technologization of culture makes them culpable for the the environmental disaster, and the way in which certain of these scientists are now doing this very public shaman dance around the ice caps, telling us to watch them melt and to think about forces in the sky and to repent. All of this follows on points Cara and others have made about how the science stands at the ready to act just like the old eschatology of religion (Nao put it like this: We had the religious "facts" and now science just replaces each one of those facts with their "facts").
Still having trouble generating good solid images of the end of the world: I guess I'm just not that kind of poet.
On the question-generating discussion. One of the compositional methods we've decided on is to use questions asked of the audience to transition them from one focus of attention to another. Cara proposed a grammar like this:
"If you drove here tonight, look to your left." At which point they would see a segment of dance, or a video clip. Our further discussion was that it would be dumb to use that as an opportunity to hit them over the head with images of tail pipes. So the question of how to make that moment useful to the audience is still floating.
Other questions:
The "which is your science/which is your clock question" grabs me. The grammatical variation coule be: "If you count the seconds until our Sun goes supernova, look up". I'm actually starting to feel a lot of poetic potential in that grammar ("If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands").
anyways, still in the works of compiling a master list. If you're working on a segment, dance or otherwise, and know you need a transition, you could shoot ideas or assignments out to the group. In the meantime, I'll codify all the ones I've got form notes and generate a few more.
that's it for a bit, see you all Sunday at 2pm.
posted by Dillon Westbrook at 9:18 AM
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