A&O CLASS MEETING  March 5, 2019

TODAY OPEN with CHECK-IN (#1 and at least two others):

1. What is your WEEKLY WONDER? 
2. WHAT STOOD OUT from last week?
3. METAPHOR for class
4. Personal example of 
   1. “epiphany” or “AHA!” or “transformative learning experience” OR
   2. a personal experience in the spirit of Witty Ticcy Ray

We need to start considering

1. ART versus ARTIFACT  (A&O notes)
2. And WHAT if ANYTHING can we infer about the STATE of MIND of the ARTIST

HOW BIASED are you?  read A&O notes on bias and culture

Also, can you remember a TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE?  Read A&O notes on the extraordinary experiences of artists and the transformative experience.  then read what Joseph Campbell said about “aesthetic arrest”

NEW: assignments after Feb 26 class was about ART in the service of Environmental and Social issues: 

• Posted news item about “general intelligence” and “social intelligence” (High IQs won’t be enough to prevent ecological disasters)
•  “ASSIGNMENT” –that is: to propose approaches to (if not solutions) that emerge from ART.   What can artists do to mitigate our shared environmental/social problems.  
  • (recalling that some art emerges from and “speaks to” relatively shallow layers of consciousness while other art is more nearly “heart-to-heart”)  (rhetorical questions:  Is there a difference between “art” and “propaganda” ? Can art be co-opted ? – you probably know that many artists have objected in recent years to their music being used in political context (Neil Young, R.E.M., Adele, Elton John, Queen …) even as other have created explicit messages (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan …) (see “Wikipedia on Music & Politics” if that’s a thread you want to follow).   (remember, music goes DEEP: read the brief comment by a noted neuroscientist about his experience of  music as a religious experience – what about yours? – ASSIGNMENT: identify a specific work of musical art that “spoke to your heart”)
  • You’ll enjoy the Wikipedia entry on Ecological Art (it is more clearly “applied” to social concerns than “environmental art” or “land art”   art)   But also, be wary of Wikipedia and use it only a source of leads.  (I know of some sites that have neglected or been unaware of relevant connections)

• WE now know (or can think critically about) ART as an experience emerging from a communicative experience (within or between people) … and that
• ART often involves a TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE … SO, can a sunset or landscape or any phenomenon in nature be art?    Read what John Muir said of seeing Mt Shasta for the first time.

Last week (Feb 26): resonances and reverberations

• Levels of organization—not just from cell to sociality, but many other more technically defined levels from a hypothetically deepest “SELF” through to externally detectable behavior.  Mutually influences can also involve eye-contact-evoked oxytocin release and mirror neurons…
  • THIS WEEK: look at our revised (enriched & simplified) version of COMMUNICATIONS
• What can we “really” know: data is inserted into gaps in our flow of information by INTERPOLATION and EXTRAPOLATION.  In neuroscience, interpolation is called “filling in” – the blind spot in our retina is a good metaphor if not an example –look at Spillman (et al’s 2006) paper on “perceptual filling in.”

• follow-up on implications (for A&O) of Jill Bolte Taylor‘s experience after her stroke?   Related video to clarify inferences you might be making about the functions of your two hemispheres discussed at https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain?utm_