A&O 2022 Meeting 5 – Feb 22

ART & ORGANISM

A SEMINAR

2023 SPRING CALENDAR

notes for meeting 5

TUESDAY February 21, 2023

including likely agenda & Outcomes from previous meeting

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• • CHECK-IN: a few comments identifying life events of week that stood out for you -include favorite EXPERIENCE of MUSIC 
  • DISCUSSION of possible Powerpoint describing your chosen behavioral pattern  —  See A&O DEEP presentation for suggested template 
  • COMMENTS: Today’s key ideas from CORE CONTENT–our scaffold, always mindful of PERSONAL CONNECTIONS to the content and FREE ASSOCIATIONS (mind-maps) about it.
  • CHECK-OUT: what stood out for you (from notes taken during seminar) if there are doodles and/or a mind-map, attach to e-mail after class

THIS WEEK we will continue discussion of perticularly relevant elements of DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Most Recent DRAFT of CONTACT INFORMATION with likely Term Topics is at end of this page

A&O MEETING 5 will emphasize DEEP ETHOLOGY

First a 2 minute video from AEON (“sitting-by-the-fire-with-a-nomadic-tribe-a-physicist-ponders-the-many-shapes-of-wisdom”) This is to be savored on its own terms … then we can ask the questions the physicist asks …

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POSSIBLE TERM TOPICS:  First pass on personal interest that might be served by a term project:   

Needs to be configured as a question about behavior (including thoughts)

and use the scaffold of  EXPRESSIVE ART, RECEPTIVE ART, BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND PHYSIOLOGY

, (does the similar appearance of patterns in deep space map of stars & galaxies (left) and the cerebellum of the brain (right) indicate resonance?

THINGS TO DO or THINK ABOUT BEFORE MEETING 5  (be prepared to comment on this during check-in or discussion):

• Questions from DEEP ETHOLOGY
• PLUS: include ART representation of idea(s) in presentation that could not be communicated by mere words
• PLUS: resonance, emergence and the “do” form in Japanese aesthetics (see box below) 

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SOME IDEAS THAT STOOD OUT FOR YOU LAST WEEK  from your check-out postings after last week’s discussions — items in bold type had multiple mentions

• check-in’s –especially interactions between participants. 
• RHYTHM
• play/storytelling
• filling-in 
• journalling
• found art
• dream-biology & “we’re all crazy”

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FEEDBACK

• the two domains of art at the four somains of DEEP ETHOLOGY are beginning to anchor your scaffold …. refresh yourself with the INTRODUCTION and start fitting the ideas you re accumulating to the rough pattern .
• New potentially transformative obscure idea: The Zen of Note Taking at A&O DIARY

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IDEA THAT STOOD OUT FOR ME centered on

• Dreaming will be a good introduction to PERCEPTION related to BELIEFS based on veridical experience versus content of consciousness (hallucinations)
• Need to nail down and apply concepts in development: epigenetics, pleiotropic genes and polygenic traits; individuation and socialization; “social referees.”
• Speaking of dreams, I recalled Little Nemo in Dreamland  (a cartoon strip from the 1920’s that was revived in the 1940’s & 5o’s, so I could find corroboration for my budding concern about the thin line between waking and dreaming experience for about five of my pre-teen years. (there was a time when I knew I could fly)
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• it is possible to forget the origin of ideas you might have (look at  “childhood amnesia” ) but also, a few years ago, I went back to an old college book to check my recollection of some idea and was astonished to find MY notes in the margin – it was important for me to learn how many of MY ideas were born way back then. [and I learned an important idea from Goethe:  “all truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.” (you can see how this influences the way I teach) 

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LOOKING more deeply at PLEASURE:  Remember frisson and how (with Stendhal Syndrome) we can “feel” a better connection between an experience and its physiological consequences.  (& what about those consequences which (unlike frisson of Stendhal’s) canNOT be detected socially?   then

Is THE SUBLIME pleasureable? Watch Evan Puschak’s video essay on how Caspar David Friedrich and how he changed landscape painting traditions to emphasize the sublime:  watch his brief YouTube essay: https://aeon.co/videos/why-caspar-david-friedrich-pits-natures-grandeur-against-the-humble-human? Visit the A&O website on SUBLIME

LIMITS?  look at the “PERCEPTION to CONCEPTION” box in the A&O site on PERCEPTION and connect that with the liberating ideas in the “LIMITED KNOWLEDGE, UNLIMITED MYSTERY box” describing Vera  Rubin’s insight at our page of INTRODUCTION to A&O...

TWO NEW IDEAS … we speak often of Levels of organization …let’s look further at:

• “emergence” : You have a sensebut now look at EMERGENCE. “The unpredictable –or at least unexpected—natures of higher orders of organization –look at that page & find the link to the A&O page on EMERGENCE)
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• Filling in?   Look at notes from a different course about The God of the Gaps. Is Science any different? Dark Matter?
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• WE SPOKE recently of how a very small (maybe even accidental or random) site of neuronal activity could be the seed from which much larger fields of activation might occur (this idea owes a bit to to “kindling”–ignited by a spark, and in epilepsy-talk, a site that–when rfepeated–can trigger more-or-less of a speading effect even unto a seizure.  It resembles how a small brief activation in the cortex can trigger a cascade of effects (which can intersect or overlap as in REM dreaming). Spontaneity? impulsiveness? RETEIVAL of a redintegrative focus? ecphory? : resonances in ART? 

   

  Look in on the “do” form in Japanese aesthetics: it “is an art that allows you to grasp the ultimate nature of the whole life by examining yourself in great detail through a singular aspect of life: “to grasp the universal through the particular”

  (deeply connected to A&O: All Truths Wait in All Things?)

  How is this connected to redintegration? Ecphory?  

  HOW WOULD THIS FUNCTION in an environment of AMBIGUITY and PAREIDOLIA . 

  ARTISTS! what does this mean for Art trouve?

   

Speaking of resonance; I’m writing this in a rain storm and, as usual, really enjoy it because I feel like ideas come together more easily.  The resonance we usually speak of–the metaphor of an action (like a piano string) at one site evoking a harmonic reaction at another site–is harmonic resonance.  Perhaps the rain effect is an example of stochastic resonance— I need to master this idea, it may help. Look at A&O notes on RESONANCE

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CONNECTIONS (it should be clear now that there are connections within and between levels of organization):

here are e-mails to enable connections with each other