Our dress rehearsal is tomorrow night; our performance is Friday night from 6:00 until 8:00. The students spent most of the week coming up with ideas, trying them out, keeping some, jettisoning others. They currently have a 20-minute long routine (performance? thing?) that they intend to repeat several times during the two hours, incorporating periodic breaks and some other materials.
We (the faculty) have tried to stay more or less out of the way. Mostly we've offered a few observations and clarifications of things that seem to be in the air but that the students couldn't quite make concrete. Today, the students were vigorously corresponding via e-mail with all kinds of ideas. The faculty worried that things were becoming a bit unfocused, and we were especially concerned given the limited amount of time that we had left.
Last week, we had mentioned how art sometimes can be seen as an attempt to solve a problem. In an effort to focus the students, we had them write down what problem this project was an attempt to solve. Most students wrote something about integrating all of the disciplines, and transforming the space was also a common theme. We (the faculty) looked over these statements in an effort to create a "thesis" statement for the entire project. Here's what we came up with:
The first structure is modeled on their current performance; we might experiment with the second one a bit tomorrow night in a very improvisatory sort of way.
Rob Devet, a a graduate student in the School of Music (I'm not partial...) has done some really neat electronic music using everyone (!) in the class singing, playing with bottles, and windchimes.
Marianna Glynska, a graduate student in photography has taken some really stunning portraits of the students in the class that are going to be incorporated into the final product as well.
(I certainly don't mean to diminish the input of the other students in calling those two out. Many of the ideas seemed to emerge from the group in a fairly organic fashion, so it's hard to say to whom any one particular idea belongs. Rob and Marianna both produced these concrete things in their particular area of expertise, hence my singling them out.)
We (the faculty) have tried to stay more or less out of the way. Mostly we've offered a few observations and clarifications of things that seem to be in the air but that the students couldn't quite make concrete. Today, the students were vigorously corresponding via e-mail with all kinds of ideas. The faculty worried that things were becoming a bit unfocused, and we were especially concerned given the limited amount of time that we had left.
Last week, we had mentioned how art sometimes can be seen as an attempt to solve a problem. In an effort to focus the students, we had them write down what problem this project was an attempt to solve. Most students wrote something about integrating all of the disciplines, and transforming the space was also a common theme. We (the faculty) looked over these statements in an effort to create a "thesis" statement for the entire project. Here's what we came up with:
Integrating the disciplines and transforming the space are givens: they are means, not an end.
There is interest in students leaving a "mark" of some sort on one another, and possibly on the space itself.
Prevalent in some of the statements, and obvious from the sorts of things the students have been doing, there's a general interest in the idea of being connected. We suggested two possible "scripts:" first, start separately--come together--become entangled--disentangle--return to separate locations. The second one is basically the inverse: start together, entangled--separate yourselves--come back together, become entangled.
The first structure is modeled on their current performance; we might experiment with the second one a bit tomorrow night in a very improvisatory sort of way.
Rob Devet, a a graduate student in the School of Music (I'm not partial...) has done some really neat electronic music using everyone (!) in the class singing, playing with bottles, and windchimes.
Marianna Glynska, a graduate student in photography has taken some really stunning portraits of the students in the class that are going to be incorporated into the final product as well.
(I certainly don't mean to diminish the input of the other students in calling those two out. Many of the ideas seemed to emerge from the group in a fairly organic fashion, so it's hard to say to whom any one particular idea belongs. Rob and Marianna both produced these concrete things in their particular area of expertise, hence my singling them out.)