On Wednesday, we started by putting the students in pairs with the people they "empathized" with (see yesterday's assignment). They were to discuss their answers to the three questions. After about 10 minutes, we changed the pairs, then changed them again. We then combined the pairs into one group of four and one group of six, the intention being to continually narrow down and refine the answers to the three questions. Following that, we came together as a group in an effort to arrive at a sort of group problem statement and solution(s). This seemed to work pretty well and generated a considerable amount of discussion, some rather esoteric and some quite down-to-earth.
On Thursday, by popular demand, I gave a lecture on entrainment, which is the spontaneous synchronization of movement. We looked at examples of entrainment from the world at large, non-musical human activity, and musical human activity. I talked about entrainment as a metaphor for analysis (something that I hope to write a paper on in the not-too-distant future). We concluded by talking about the coalition signaling hypothesis and brainwave entrainment.
That all took about 45 minutes, after which we went out into the space and I led them in a variety of musical improvisation exercises. I had asked all of them to bring something that could be considered a musical instrument. People brought drums, a beer keg and drum sticks, a bucket, a frisbee, sticks, kitchen utensils, and a variety of other thingamajigs. My hope was to get them a) thinking about entrainment in music; b) thinking about what musicians have to do when they perform; and c) reacting and responding to one another in musical ways. Those activities lasted about twenty minutes.
Following that, Melissa had brought several large sheets of green polyester that the students began playing with (for lack of a better word--"improvising with," perhaps?) and that, along with discussion and wandering about the space seemed to generate some concrete ideas of what to create for the final project.
Today, the students have a "work day." They get to spend all of their time in the space, with the expectation that something fairly concrete will begin to coalesce. We had also asked that we have a "needs list" assembled by the end of the day so that we can try to secure whatever they might need to create this project successfully.
On Thursday, by popular demand, I gave a lecture on entrainment, which is the spontaneous synchronization of movement. We looked at examples of entrainment from the world at large, non-musical human activity, and musical human activity. I talked about entrainment as a metaphor for analysis (something that I hope to write a paper on in the not-too-distant future). We concluded by talking about the coalition signaling hypothesis and brainwave entrainment.
That all took about 45 minutes, after which we went out into the space and I led them in a variety of musical improvisation exercises. I had asked all of them to bring something that could be considered a musical instrument. People brought drums, a beer keg and drum sticks, a bucket, a frisbee, sticks, kitchen utensils, and a variety of other thingamajigs. My hope was to get them a) thinking about entrainment in music; b) thinking about what musicians have to do when they perform; and c) reacting and responding to one another in musical ways. Those activities lasted about twenty minutes.
Following that, Melissa had brought several large sheets of green polyester that the students began playing with (for lack of a better word--"improvising with," perhaps?) and that, along with discussion and wandering about the space seemed to generate some concrete ideas of what to create for the final project.
Today, the students have a "work day." They get to spend all of their time in the space, with the expectation that something fairly concrete will begin to coalesce. We had also asked that we have a "needs list" assembled by the end of the day so that we can try to secure whatever they might need to create this project successfully.