technology, learning, surrealism, and music

Collective Poem

This is a poem created collectively using Magnetic Poetry on 15 January, 2010.

The players were Martin Koffer, Rooth Calvert-Ennals, and myself. We each had a pile of word tiles.  We took turns, choosing one or two tiles from our own pile and building up a surrealist poem on a tin tray, phrase by phrase. It is a type of game similar but not identical to Exquisite Corpse, as the previous words were not hidden.

Below is the result, which appears to be a list of instructions.

Glorious shard created my approach was grace.

Demand a masterpiece after drunk instrument of beer.

Chisel form in original balance.

Never capture harmony if metal breaks.

Sculpt white icons too.

Some angel is here, imagining art.

Axons in the Cambrian News and Radio Ceredigion

We made the papers! See the blurb about Axons and Dendrites in the Cambrian News this week http://www.cambrian-news.co.uk/whats-on/i/4020/

If you are interested in mind, body, and spirit, listen to Amanda Painting on Radio Ceredigion at 9pm. This Sunday she is featuring a 15-minute interview about our performance. Radio Ceredigion is the local radio station for the West Coast of Wales on 96.6-97.4 and 103.3 FM.

• Sunday schedule and link to listen online: http://www.radioceredigion.net/lang-en/schedule/sunday
• Amanda’s webpage: http://www.amandapainting.co.uk/radio.html

Axons and Dendrites performance 21 Jan

Well, everyone is back and we are in the final stages of getting ready for the performance next week. The pieces are fitting together very nicely. This evening was our best practice so far. We came out of it energised and happy with what happened within the group.

To give you a glimpse into our working method, we began with a warmup based on walking, designed to increase our awareness of the others in the group. We walk around in the space, aware of the others. There is no leader, but we try to stop walking and start again in unison. We always have a reflection afterward to share what we notice about the process.

Then we went into a half-hour open-structured improvisational jam. We weren’t worried about fitting into any of the three specific sections of the performance itself. The purpose was to work the group together and play, experiment as much as possible within this particular grouping of people. Although we have been working since August, this was only the second time the group has been together since the long holiday break. The jam was very good and there were some ideas that we played with and developed further in the next part of the practice.

We started the next section by thinking about the times in our lives when we have been energised by recieving and then giving a ’spark’ to other people, and then we played the piece as if it were part of the real performance. ‘Pass the spark’ is the central activity for part 2 of the piece, which will last half an hour. In this activity, one person has ‘the spark’. The spark is the focus of everyone’s attention. That person can play in any way he/she likes, then pass the spark (focus) on to another person. Sometimes we get rapid dialogues between two people, sometimes a more extended development. It is like ‘trading riffs’ in jazz improvisation, except that the riffs can be music, or words, or movement or any combination. There was an intense awareness of the focus and some very inventive playing. I sat out and played the ‘audience’ in this part.

So what do we do, exactly, when we have the spark? Make music, make sound effects, play with objects, dance, walk, tell stories silently or with words, express our solitude or respond to other performers. It is improvisational within the central structure and concept, so it is different each time. Inventive movement — even the cello making dancelike gestures as the boundary between musicians and dancers becomes fluid. Entrancing.

After another reflection on that exercise, we briefly explored ‘oceanic feeling’, the central concept of part three. We reflected back on the times we have had this kind of meditational experience and brainstormed some ideas to explore more fully in the next session.

If you are in the Aberystwyth area on 21 January (Thursday next week), I hope you can come to the Arts Centre to see us.

Postcards from the bottom of the ocean

Here at long last is an archive of postcards from the bottom of the ocean, also including a few other artifacts from the Surrealist Salon activities, such as the Palimpsest Stories.

This series of works began in February 2008 to the present. Some of them have gone into the gallery ::the studio:: for sale in the gift shop. Others were given to friends as gifts or are still in my house.

The decalcomania ones are the newest.

Picasa Web Albums – mary – postcards.

postcards

Axons on the Arts Centre website

Just a quick note to share the link to the Aberystwyth Arts Centre website entry for our performance on 21 January http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/whatson/theatre/info/8230/

We are in the booklet too, of course.

If you are in Aber, come to see us!

Axons posters

See the beautiful posters Becky Bridge has made for our Axons and Dendrites performance on 21 January.

Gwella launch – new material on our Nexus website

Just finished making links available to video interviews and lecture captures from our Gwella launch – showcasing good practice in technology-enhanced learning. Check them out!

Report on Gwella Nexus launch.

Leeds Surrealist Group

Leeds Surrealist Group.

I found their new journal, Phosphor, at the Manchester Art Museum when I went recently to see Angels of Anarchy, surrealist women’s art.

The journal is quite good, the Autumn 2009 issue commemorates Franklin Rosemont, an American surrealist who founded the Chicago Surrealist Group in the 1970’s with his wife, Penelope.  Franklin passed away last April.

Terribly ironic for me, as I had read the Rosemonts’ publications in the 70’s (Athanor, book of poetry by Penelope, and Arsenal, their journal). I’d lost track of them over the years as my attention was directed elsewhere, then rediscovered them about a year ago with the start of our surrealist salon group in Aberystwyth.  Only a short time later, Franklin passed away.

If you are near Leeds, that group’s activities look well worth checking out.

I was nicely encouraged to see various references to synesthesia in the journal.

Watch for more…..

back to surrealist roots

I love this quote from “Forecast is Hot” edited by Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, and Paul Garon, Black Swan Press, 1997 (no offense meant to any Marxists out there, the Rosemonts put it in double quotes, you’ll note). Collective play and the ensuing freedom is what we’re after.

The Exaltation of Play, Gateless Gate to Objective Chance

Human freedom cannot be won by miserabilist means. Unlike the tradition-bound “Marxist” admirers of “business as usual” who want “Jobs for All,” surrealists demand “All Play and No Work!” To stimulate surrealist collective creation is the principal reason for the creation of surrealist collectives, and we have found play to be the modus operandi that works best. As in “Time-Travelers’ Potlatch,” play questions conventional relationships, overturns definitions, puts pleasure before duty, frees the imagination, reinforces desire. Alchemically, play could be considered the open entrance to the shut palace of objective chance—a free-for-all approach to the infinite variety of unexpected self-revelation, and the basis for a new, revolutionary poetic morality. What at first may appear to be only a moment’s “time out” from the Old Order becomes an “Open Sesame” to the revolutionary life—a concrete prefiguration of the life of poetry made by all.

surrealist poem generator result

Here is one poem created on the Manchester Art Gallery site for online exquisite corpse. This one sounds like a real poem, pretty much.

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/angelsofanarchy/besurreal/poems/complete/61/521

The goblin spoke in stones and pyramids

Wings empowered the lioness to write water lives

unlike others my wings slightly tainted

i must swim to reach your beaches, feet in my dune

and out spilt waves of shadow from nature’s womb

Reflections in the sleeping eye of the one I love

Feet of wisdom travel through lifes depth

his blue eyes pierce my heart, I fall to my knees

I saw a cat eating food