I have the opportunity to present on Day Two of the Forum and I have been thinking for a while about what to say. After my first draft I started again and late this week had my thoughts focused by Charles Leadbeater’s work. I have posted the draft and the presentation on SlideShare.
This is the presentation I hope to use as the framework for my talk.
I am using more Creative Commons images from Flickr in my presentations. Just searching for the images is transforming how I think. I have been thinking about presentation style too and am fascinated about how I might mash the Night Air, Garrison Keillor’s Radio Program and the Bush Telegraph for this Forum.
I am all for openness, open education, open discussions, open knowledge and a culture of sharing. Yet as digital identities become ever more important, it is critical that we have the rights and the tools to manage that identity and that social network providers appreciate and support those rights and make it easy for individuals to understand how they can mange both privacy and openness. This is an issue which will not go away.
This post may change too as the week develops. I am keen to add a voice recording here.
Rose White has observed that Guerrilla knitting has “a couple of meanings in the knitting community – to some, it merely means knitting in public, while to others, it means creating public art by knitted means.”
Her talk at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress noted that:
Contemporary knitters feel very clever for coming up with edgy language to describe their knitting, but the truth is that for decades there have been knitters and other textile artists who are at least as punk rock as today’s needle-wielders. This talk will cover the vibrant history of contemporary knitting, with a focus on projects that will make you say, “Wow, that’s knitted?”
Today at the University of Canberra I had that wow feeling. I came across these examples of the art form.
The anonymity of guerilla knitting is such that I have no idea who installed these pieces. They may be devotees of Knitta. Or perhaps an acolyte of Bronwen Sandland. Perhaps someone from Parramatta. Whoever it was made it an unforgettable day for me … the first time since 2002 I have seen knitting in the wild!
This delight led me to concur with Kristin at Spinhandspun Design who observes that:
By covering construction sites, road signs, and technologies in handmade materials, each piece reminds us that our symbolic environments deserve a second skin: softer, warmer, imperfect, and tattooed with subtle reminders of our humanity. Ideas spread through human interactions…
Today was a delightful day for me travelling into and out of Canberra. It was a beautiful late Spring day. All the recent rains have left the paddocks green and verdant. As usual I was switching between Radio National and Classic FM on my radio looking for news, stories and music.
On my way out of Mongarlowe I picked up the start of the Law Report on Radio National. It is not a program I listen to that much but when I heard Peggy Hora speak I realised I needed to stay tuned for the next half hour. I was fascinated by her discussion with Damien Carrick of problem-solving courts and therapeutic jurisprudence.
By the time I reached Bungendore I was trying to think how the principles of problem-solving courts could be applied to learning and teaching and an individualising approach to learning to learn. In her discussion Peggy observed:
The focus is on the treatment and recovery of the person in front of you. The system is setting up multiple places to get help, based upon scientific assessment and programs that really work and have an evidence basis for working; getting that person in treatment, holding their feet there long enough so they can engage, and then get them on their merry way after graduation and on to a mature recovery.
Her story of Nick helped me clarify my thoughts:
I think he was 18 plus two days old when he came into my adult court. He was angry, he was acting out, he was thrashing about, he was a very, very upset young man. And his father was an alcoholic and a rage-aholic. His grandfather was an alcoholic, so he came by it all very naturally. And I used to tell Nick he was the hardest son I ever raised, because I’m the mother of sons, and he did not go through things smoothly, but boy, when it finally worked, it was the most amazing thing. And the amazing thing was once he got clean and sober, his mother said to his father, ‘If Nick can do it, you’d better do it or I’m going to leave you.’ So his father started going to AA meetings with Nick, and then Grandma said, ‘If Nick and father can do it, then you’d better do it, or I’m going to leave you’. So all three generations of men ended up in treatment and recovery. You know, it still makes me choke up a little bit to think about that. So that was my story of Nick, the hardest son I ever raised.
I was left with a sense of Peggy as someone with a passionate, vocational commitment to therapeutic jurisprudence and am keen to follow her year as Thinker in Residence in South Australia. On my way home from a day of meetings at the University of Canberra I happened upon another passionate speaker, Helen Scales.
Helen was interviewed by Philip Adams on Late Night Live on Radio National. I encourage you to download the podcast of her interview about her new book Poseidon’s Steed. Her enthusiasm and knowledge is a shining example of what the joy of discovery can yield. I am going to circulate the link to the podcast to all my colleagues. I am hopeful that Helen’s infectious energy can be a most wonderful tonic.
So … my day was book ended by two remarkable women interviewed sensitively by two informed radio hosts. I will use both these interviews in a range of contexts and as a result of my new awareness of Peggy’s and Helen’s work will follow their progress with enormous interest.
One of the delightful aspects of sharing ideas is that others reciprocate in sharing. Today I received a YouTube link from a colleague that captured and encapsulated the essence of Johan Huizinga’s play elements of culture in Homo Ludens (1938).
The view we take in the following pages is that culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning… Social life is endued with supra-biological forms, in the shape of play, which enhances its value.
On seeing the video my interests in music and performance coalesced around playing and playfulness. The video is from a project at the Odenplan station in Stockholm. (Much discussed earlier this month!) (Some Flickr Creative Commons’ images of Odenplan here.) Laurel Papworth’s has posted about this project and Fun Theoryhere.
Two other videos from the series, the Bottle bank Arcade and the World’s Deepest Bin can be found here.
Last night I was driving up to Sydney and listened to Amy Dickson’s arrangement for soprano saxophone of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto. Her performance reminded me of a point made by Emma Ayres in her program about Amy’s practicing routines for circular breathing and her interview with Amy (11 September 2009).
This NZ news item described Amy’s creative achievements: Transcribing it (Philip Glass’ 1987 Violin Concerto) meant converting the soloist’s double-stopping into arpeggios, although there are “no more than 10 bars to do in the whole concerto”, she told the New Zealand Herald. “The most important thing was those endless notes that go on and on,” she says. “Which meant I had to learn circular breathing so I didn’t leave any of them out.” The result, said Herald reviewer William Dart, was that Dickson blended cunningly into the orchestra around her “creating the illusory textures ideal for minimalist music”.
Elaine Page has some great observations about performance in her conversation with Margaret Throsby. I particularly liked her discussion of a performer’s access to video and the use that can be made of video.
Both musicians highlighted for me that our discussions of performance in sport and the evolution of a language about performance must be located in the performing arts.
The narratives we use for performance has been an interest of mine for since my time at Dartington College of Arts in the late 1980s.
