Reflections on the First Two Weeks

 In the first two weeks of this class, we wanted to get you moving and experiencing and making and noticing. We asked you to 1) think about collections of objects, describe them, connect them to yourself, 2) build something with Lego bricks, name it, refine it, connect it to others' creations, 3) explore walking in a space in a normal way and with layers added, alone and with others, inside and outside, 4) use the five senses to notice what was around you in a way that you might not always pay attention to, 5) start recording what you noticed in your sketch books, 6) start writing about your experiences in your digital journal, and 7) start designing your collection bag for future walks and to hold future objects.

Basically, we did a lot of things, and all of them are not necessarily connected yet -- but it is a start to accessing the creative process, and we will return to many of these things and add to them as we move through the course. 

We have asked you to record what you noticed and what interested you, and I want to record a little of what I have noticed too. Here are two things:

1. I am very interested in shape, patterns, contrast, and mood/emotion. I like the way that people on a stage make pictures and how movement creates a story. When our class was "walking the space" in the Black Box, I reflected that it is very different to observe that rather than participate in it. I don't know if you could see or feel the big difference it made, for example, when you were walking in straight lines and using hard corners versus when you were flowing in circular shapes with curved turns and changes. It impacted the picture I saw and that effected the emotion and energy of the space. I wish that I had made a video of the process so that everyone could see what it looked like. But we will come back to that again when we study David Byrne's American Utopia...and maybe we will create a video then. I was inspired to experiment further, so I had my IB Theater class design some movements for their classes and use them too -- so thanks for giving me that idea.

2. I read a book called The Art of Noticing this summer, and that author focuses on creativity as a way of seeing and experiencing, and we will use a few of those prompts this term. One is the "five senses walk" and I noticed that in your write-ups of that experience, most people talked about 6 senses:

a) touch -- physical feeling, b) smell, c) sound -- hearing, d) sight -- seeing, e) taste -- (although most people did not actually go around tasting things as we walked which was smart), and f) atmosphere/mood/emotion -- a type of feeling that is not a physical feeling. 

That was so interesting to me because it was something that a lot of your talked about perceiving or noticing as you walked (and I noticed that too when you were walking the space) but it was not a tangible thing you could draw -- it was more of an invisible presence that you could feel or sense that perhaps came from or was connected to the things around you, or in some cases, was connected to what was inside you. In theater we look at how atmosphere is created by things like costuming and set design and how mood/emotion can alter a meaning -- one word said with different emotions changes the meaning of that word. This is something I am interested in exploring more too, as connected to the creative process. How do people change the basic 5 senses by adding their interpretation or perception of how they feel about them, what they associate with them, by adding a story to them? Perhaps that can be a working definition of what I see creativity as, for now, although I can add to it or revise it as I reflect more on the other activities and experiences we will have in this course.

Here is an article about the five senses and more, the sense of space, force, movement, balance.....and more: https://www.livescience.com/60752-human-senses.html

Here are two images of synesthesia (experiencing two or more senses as linked):

As we approach week three, think about different ways you can sense creativity in the world around you and notice what you notice when you access these 5 or more senses.

--Ms. Guarino