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Table Of Contents:
12.01.09
11.02.09
STOP and listen to the music... a disappointing article.
10.25.09
"Scope" - [archaic] a purpose, end, or intention
Greek skopos 'target,' from skeptesthai 'look out.'
10.14.09
A Brief Glimpse of Anne Frank On Film
10.13.09
William S. Burroughs' & Brion Gysin's Non-Linear Adding Machine
I decided that the two pieces I posted last week were essentially dead ends. So what do I do with dead ends? Well, used the Burroughs/Gysin Non-Linear Adding Machine to randomly combine the two pieces. I have the raw output and then an edited version. This "machine" is fucking great.
A Poem + The Beginnings : RAW
A Poem + The Beginnings : EDITED
10.12.09
“Every time you think a thought you are affecting the consciousness of everyone who comes in contact with that thought…including the collective.” -Ralph Metzner GUMA Entheogens
10.06.09
Open-source Currency
Allen and Bob ... Wind does indeed blow. But where is the wind when it isn't blowing?
Research - Alan Watts + Nature Club
10.05.09
The Beginnings - An entrance to a porch inspired narrative.
A Poem - Quick write. Expansion? Perhaps.
09.29.09
Note:
Revisit your memories. Repaint an expression.
I realized at some point that I failed to provide an authentic offering to the "Stew," as it seems we were to add a piece of fiction. I chose to pick apart Albert Einstein's The World As I See It. Not fiction. Anyway, I did however read, assess, and add to a piece that Jesse was working on last week. Our active collaboration is illustrated on a page linked to above.
All of the feedback I received led me to believe my narrative acceptable. I re-read it four times and came to the conclusion that I really like the piece (its tone and use of language) as is. It was a product of a momentary gleam of inspiration I happened to find and harness. I tried to revise some of the language and found it to be too artificial. Hope this draft will suffice.
09.28.09
NYTIMES 1916 - Many Writers Not Helped by College Training...
09.23.09
GOLDEN PHILOSOPHY
09.22.09 - Experimenting with the experience of sound
A Sound Experience...
convergentemergence.mp3
= = =
Absolutely Fascinating Lecture on Our Moral Code, in part related to the stock market.
Chapter 2: Creating and utilizing language drawn from research that allows your audience to find personal connections to the information you are presenting them with--ultimately this gives meaning to your piece and enables your audience to benefit from the ideas inspired by your research.
Discovering/Uncovering/Creating roles of the author and his/her audience.
Before, during, and after you write on the thoughts provoked by your research, you need to be consistently and thoroughly considering your audience. How will your audience interpret your piece? Every word you choose to included plays its own role in communicating a thought to a reader. How do we order these words in to language that forms a foundation from which the reader can explore the ideas you are relaying and get the most out them?
Understanding the role of the writer:
"In a research report, you must switch the roles of student and teacher" (Boot et. al 18).
You are the one who has performed the research on a specific topic. You need to be aware of your role in this manner. When you present your research through your ideas, you are performing the role of an educator. You are educating your audience, allowing them to connect to certain thoughts tied directly to your research and findings. The audience is trusting your ability to relay reliable and well examined material.
"...You must think of your reader as someone who doesn't know it but needs to and yourself as someone who will give her reason to want to know it" (Booth et. al 18-19).
Beyond providing the "facts" uncovered through your own research, these facts need to be presented with the intention of relating an idea greater than that or those tied to the fact itself. In other words, think of these "facts" as catalysts through which the purpose behind your writing will spawn and flourish; as simply stepping stones to guide the reader to your ultimate point. Further, you need to instill a sense enthusiasm in your reader. Tell them why it is beneficial for them to read your piece, and create an environment of interest or curiousity that ensures your own ideas will be absorbed and interpreted.
Envisioning the role of your reader:
Your audiences' purposes for reading your piece will most definitely vary from person to person. However, it is safe to assume that your audience is doing so for the following general reasons:
Entertainment : For this crowd you want to construct your language so that it is not only appealing in its use but its message. Attract the reader to your thoughts, give them details that keep them engaged, or simply draw on excitment or interest. Why do they need to know the ideas you are relating? Tell them specifically that it is in their interest to hear you out. Appeal to their interests, and relate not only the bare facts you have uncovered through your research, but illustrate how it is these facts can be used by your audience. I.E. Now that we know this, what can we do with this information?
Problem Solving : How can the ideas you have uncovered through your research be directed or focused to address or resolve a specific problem or issue at hand? Everyone has issues they must confront, including your readers. How can your research aid in their attempts to tackle certain problems they are facing? For example: If you research the effects of a certain medication that has recently been approved for use in the general population and find the potential side effects to be of greater consequence than the remedial effects produced by the drug, your audience may be those who could be considering the use of said medication for their own purposes. Educate them as to the contradictions your research has uncovered, and provide them with another perspective from which they may begin to form their own opinions on the ideas that may very well play in to their future decisions.
Furthering Understanding : Perhaps your audienced is already fairly well versed in the topic of your discussion. Provide them with new information on the topic or relate abnormalities you have discovered through your research that they may be currently unaware of. Through the research process, you should come to find interpretations that may have yet to be expressed. Hone in on these and use them to connect to your audience. It will provide them a stronger basis of understanding a specific topic.
"You are concerned with your particular community of readers, with their interests and expectations, with improving their understanding, based on the best evidence you can find. That's the social contract that all researchers must establish with their readers" (Booth et. al 24).
09.13.09 - 09.15.09 - Narrative Rough Draft/Feedback
NARRATIVE:
Feedback.
09.06.09 - composition
No comment necessary...
I found a conversation I had with one of my co-workers most intriguing, as she proceeded to explain to me her idea of what the term "composition" means. She attended public schools in and around Ohio and Pennsylvania in the 1950s, and it was from experiences with her English classes throughout these years that she first remembers developing an awareness of the concept. Our conversation took place at work and lasted about ten minutes. I recorded the conversation in its entirety and then transcribed the key points we covered on to the wiki.
Composition
JP: What do you think of when you hear the word "composition?"
SV: I think how much I hated composition in relation to writing in English, or what we called English as a subject in the 50s and 60s.
JP: Why does the word "hate" appeal to you as an adjective to describe your feelings about composition?
SV: You could never choose what you wanted to write about.
JP: It was never appealing because you always felt forced into writing or composing pieces of work whose subjects were of little or no interest to you?
SV: Yes! Composition, to me, was scary. You couldn't write about beer, or horses, or airplanes...
JP: So you couldn't write about what you knew...?
SV: Or what you enjoyed...they would tell us we needed to write about something we didn't even care about. You felt as though you had no relationship to the topics you were addressing.
JP: And that is what was scary to you...being forced to write about a specific topic...
SV: I don't know if it scared me as much as I didn't like the idea of writing about something that just wasn't me.
JP: Ok...
SV: When I think of composition, that's the first thing that comes to mind...how much I just dreaded English class. Composition to me was a paper, or a report/essay, something like that. And 99 percent of the time it had to be on something prescribed, something I had no interest in or knowledge of.
SV: I don't believe you can write about something that you dislike or that you just can't connect with...
JP: ...or you can't write about it and expect it to be a successful piece of work...?
SV: Yeah.
09.05.09 - Definition
"Life on earth is not a created hierarchy but an emergent holcarchy arisen from the self-induced synergy of combination, interfacing, and recombination" (Margulis et al. 9).
More on Life as it unfolds.
definition
def-i-ni-tion n. 1. a statement of the exact meaning of a word, esp. in a dictionary
2. an exact statement or description of the nature, scope,or meaning of something
3. the action or process of defining something
The very definition of definition is flawed in the sense that there is little to no "exact-ness" to the meaning provided by the dictionary. In fact, there are three seperate definitions of "definition" when the word is used as a noun. Three takes on the same meaning creates an idea that is more vague than it is exact.
In all cases, an individual’s interpretation of a meaning or definition of a situation, thing, word, etc. is, at best, based entirely upon their perception of language—its history, use, association, etc.—and overall awareness of their subjective grasp of reality (in the broadest sense). Many people have the unique ability to convince themselves that they maintain a commitment to an almost entirely “objective” point of view. The fact is our senses and personal intuition influence every second of the experiences that ultimately lead to our comprehension of a particular word or concept. The best we can hope for is to find those connections through experience and in language that fuel the active search for and participation in methods that allow for the loosening of the conscious ego, the dissipation of the self, and the realization of a concept or word as it truly exists. Essentially it is imperative to remain aware of the fact that people use their own interpretation as a basis for their depiction of a definition, and likely utilize precise language with specific interests or ends in mind. In the same sense, it is invariably important to consider audience and how they may interpret your use of language or definition. In order to provide an audience with the footing necessary to reach a mutually interactive plane of thought, your definitions must be well reasoned and easily demonstrable to even the least informed individual. If you provide your audience with a clear contextual frame through which they may view your definition, they will be more apt to take interest in your message, and perhaps even connect with your ideas.
09.04.09 The Craft of Research: CHAPTER 1
What is research? the author(s) ask their audience.
re⋅search - n. diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, applications, etc. (dictionary.com)
Our author(s) soon answer by claiming "we do research whenever we gather information to answer a question that solves a problem" (Booth et al. 10).
Research is performed by people of all levels of education and all walks of life. It is not surprising then that "research is in fact the world's biggest industy" (Booth et al. 9).
The authors of this text make have constructed a wonderful paragraph that truly speaks to my understanding of the importance of research. It reads as follows:
Without trustworthy published research, we all would be locked in the opinions of the moment, prisoners of what we alone experience or dupes to whatever we're told. Of course, we want to believe that our opinions are sound, yet mistaken ideas, even dangerous ones, fluorish because too many people accept too many opinions based on too little evidence. And as recent events have shown, those who act on unreliable evidence can lead us--indeed have led us--into disaster. (Booth et. al 10)
How do we do research?
Write to Remember: Essentially, take thorough notes, highlight, mark pages, etc. so that you can easily get back aboard the same train of thought you left waiting at the station, upon your boarding of successive thought trains.
Write to Understand: "A second reason for writing is to see larger patterns in what you read. When you arrange and rearrange the results of your research in new ways, you discover new implications, connections, and complications" (Booth et al. 12).
Write to Test Your Thinking: We write to preserve thoughts and mental connections we make between what we read, interpret, and experience. We write to get these thoughts down on to paper and have a starting point from which we can expand upon our reasoning.
"it would be a feeble education that did not change you at all, and the deeper your education, the more it will change the "you" that you are or want to be" (Booth et al. 13).
It is important to be able to conduct sound and proper research to provide yourself with a credible basis from which to make and support your ideas. When you learn how to present research and ideas in to a formal report, you learn also how to utilize language as a key with which you may unlock the door between your thoughts and how they are interpreted by your audience. Your ultimate goal is to explore, interpret, and express ideas from the most objective point of reference possible. How to you accomplish such a seemingly difficult task? Through research of course.
09.01.09 - Emergence
Emergence- the process of coming into being [our astral selves].
Based on the dictionary definition of emergence, I felt inclined to transcribe a selection of text evident in a publication I randomly came accross in my own home entitled: MYSTERIES OF THE UNKNOWN Psychic Voyages. The topic of discussion? Astral travel.
There appears to be countless schools of thought which claim there to exist an aura-like energy field surrounding our physical bodies. Its composition? Our astral-selves. Apparently many people have the ability to detach their astral-selves from their physical selves, allowing the "self" as an observer to explore dimensions in and outside of our physical world. These experiences are most notably described as OBEs or Out of Body Experiences...
08.31.09 - McCloud-CHAPTER 1
"If people failed to UNDERSTAND, it was because they defined what could be too narrowly!" --McCloud
Comics is an artistic medium. Traditionally, comics have been used to portray seemingly useless, elementary, or purely entertainment based information. This has allowed comics, as an artistic medium, to be thought of in the same way: seemingly useless, elementary, etc.
The artform--the medium--known as comics is a vessel which can hold any number of ideas and images. The "content" of those images and ideas is, of course, up to creators, and we all have different tastes. The trick is to never mistake the message for the messenger. --McCloud
I.e. Don't mistake how the medium is used or has been used in the past (the definition provided most notably by the content expressed through the medium) to judge how it is currently used or can be used in the future.
McCloud astutely points out that at one time or another, the whole lot of artistic vehicles for expression (written word, music, theater, etc.) have been criticized in and of themselves.
Comics- Sequential visual art.
"Isn't animated film just visual art in sequence?"
Difference between film and comics:
"Animation is sequential in time but not spatially juxtaposed as comics are. Each successive frame of a movie is projected on exactly the same space--the screen--while each frame of comics must occupy a different space." --McCloud
SPACE DOES FOR COMICS WHAT TIME DOES FOR FILM!
Com.ics (kom'iks)n. plural form, used with a singular verb. 1. Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.
The comics medium has been utilized for thousands of years in the expression of events, opinions, stories, etc. Some of the earliest comics can be found in the ancient hieroglyphics of the Egyptians.
Fast forward through the ages...Ward, Frans Masereel, Max Ernest--all used sequence in their arrangement images to tell a story.
REINVENT MEDIA !!!
08.25.09
I was unaware of the extent of the existence of social networks through telephone technologies prior to the populazation of the Internet.
With the absence of certain senses are the remaining senses heightened?
The Boy Who Heard Too Much...
JacobParker AdvComp by Jacob M. Parker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Comments (2)
Christina Hagan said
at 5:18 pm on Sep 13, 2009
Your writing and viewpoints on things seem very similar to mine! I do love the narrative story on Nature which is my favorite thing in life!
Travis May said
at 9:36 pm on Sep 26, 2009
Thanks for posting the entheogen video...good stuff!
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