Group Three Written Proposal

Jessica, Meagan, Sarah Mae, Stephen

Introduction

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Chaos

(by Jessica)

Another aspect of chaos that the class and the wiki followed can be taken from a quote by M.C. Escher, “Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm.” The wiki represented the multiplicity without rhythm in the beginning, new pages were sprouting everywhere and none of the pages were connected to each other. Everyone started their own home page and it took the class a while before we started tagging and linking our pages together. Since there was not much linking on the wiki, there was no order that comes along with repetition. Chaos theory states that “the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random; because of an exponential growth of errors in the initial conditions however there are no random elements involved” (Chaos theory, Wikipedia). The wiki followed this aspect of a chaotic system as well; there was an exponential growth of pages which made the space seemed very random. However, the class was not behaving randomly. The chaos of the class and the wiki was just part of the process. Before the classes started to tag and link their wiks together, the class gave the impression of being very fragmented. Each class member had their own chunk of wiki to work on making it very hard to view the wiki as a whole. All of the pieces of the wiki were their; they just had not been linked together in the right order yet.

Trey introduced new ideas to the class; things, like the wiki, some of us never heard of We had to learn to think outside of the box in order to use these aspects of the class, however some of us didn’t want to let go of our conventional ways of learning. By the second week Brian came up with a good analogy in regards to dealing with the chaos of the class, he did not directly apply it to the class but it fit well. Brian wrote “I trudge on with my toolkit of presuppositions until I encounter a roadblock … at which point I reach into my toolkit and pull out the presuppostion(s) necessary to effect a way around or over or under or through” it and as a class we dug into our academic tool kits and tried to traverse the wiki and the chaos of the class. For some of us it was harder than others; some of the members of the class were confused and did not have the tools needed to work on the wiki, I know I didn’t. We all sat in our boxes looking out at each other, with a look of perplexity on our face, trying to figure out what to do. As Brian calls it, it was a “blessing disguised as a curse.” It was necessary for “a good samaritan with a different toolkit to offer me a way out,” in our class that good samaritan was Trey. He offered us tool after tool and explanation after explanation until we were able to traverse the wiki on our own. And although we have new tools in our tool kit to traverse the class and the wiki, the class was still turbulent about these things.

Turbulence

(by Meagan)

I wanted to sample from the wiki and the literature about this topic of turbulence, but it was slim-pickins. There were a few things I could have used, but just not enough to satisfy my needs for the project. In light of this, I chose, instead, to write my own definition of the word (the stage), and also write about my own view of the progression of the class through this stage in retrospect (sorta).

What is turbulence you ask? Well silly, it is obviously when your airplane gets all wobbly and makes your stomach feel like you are on a roller coaster and could puke up your airplane peanuts at any minute! I think that is a pretty darn good explanation for turbulence, but it doesn’t exactly fit into this project, now does it? Maybe my good buddy, Merriam-Webster can lend me a hand here, M-W told me just the other day that turbulence is, “the quality or state of being turbulent: as a: great commotion or agitation b: irregular atmospheric motion especially when characterized by up-and-down currents c: departure in a fluid from a smooth flow.” These definitions are all fine and good, but I chose to tweak or “trope” their definitions and make an operational definition that is even more specific to our project and the course.

Turbulence – A transition stage to understanding; beginning the transformation from chaos to order and rhythm. To put it in a way that relates to the path of the class directly, it is the idea that our analytical minds need to create their own structure and order from the chaos to attain understanding and be able to progress in the course. This “turbulence” is the time of aggression and frustration that comes from trying to individually structure the perceived chaos. I would place this stage at about the second week of the course. The first week is always a little confusing, and the second week was when we seemed to try and look past the chaos to some semblance of order (a tiny white light at the end of a very long tunnel). More specifically, I believe this stage to be when people started asking Trey what he expected of them, what this assignment or that assignment was about, and when people started getting into quarrels over the specifics and structure of the class.

Everyone seemed to move through this course of chaos → turbulence → rhythm →harmony at his or her own rate. Some people had a rhythm and an understanding of the class in the first week, while others were still turbulent, or perceiving chaos. Some of us, even now may still be turbulent trying to create a structure in our minds as to what the class should be. But I guess this makes sense, because if everyone went through this transition at the same pace, then it wouldn’t be very turbulent now would it?

Now that the semester is nearing it’s close, I believe that most all of us have moved on from the stage of turbulence to rhythm or harmony. Yet even though the stage was marked with a negative vibe, I still believe it to be a good and necessary stage to understanding and being able to fully appreciate the course. To any of you who may still be in this stage, I hope that you will be able to look back at the course after it is finished and have a little more closure about it in retrospect. I for one believe that I took a rather long time going from turbulence to rhythm. I am (I have learned) a structured person, and I feel comfortable in an environment where I can have set guidelines and know where I stand in the ranks. Once I was able to liberate myself from my turbulent state in the course and think outside the cube, I feel like I was really able to enjoy all of our blogs and prompts and posts. Looking back through my (and other’s) weekly wiki posts, I was able to see this pattern of chaos to turbulence to rhythm emerging. Pretty cool.

Rhythm

(in progress by Sarah Mae)

As our journey took us from chaos to turbulence and eventually toward rhythm we began to realize that rhythm is not necessarily a steady beat. Our Deleuze text reminded us that “Chaos is not the opposite of rhythm, but the milieu of all milieus. There is a rhythm whenever there is a transcoded passage from one milieu to another, a communication of milieus, coordination between heterogeneous space-times. Drying up, death, intrusion have rhythm. It is well known that rhythm is not meter or cadence, even irregular meter or cadence: there is nothing less rhythmic than a military march.” So, for some the seminar continued to be a series of chaotic events while for others it was a discontinuation of chaos and a higher sense of stability and for still others, it became a mixture of both. We all continued to struggle to find our own rhythms within the course and within the group but as we transitioned out of turbulence and into rhythm it became less stressful.

Slowly, as we reviewed our texts and began to find our individual footing we began to approach the wiki project with a higher level of enthusiasm and the group rhythm started to become evident. We wrote, formed initial small groups and as Paul Miller (aka D. J. Spooky) states in his book Rhythm Science we discovered that "For the most part, creativity rests in how you recontextualize the previous expression of others, a place where there is no such thing as 'an immaculate perception'." This was an important revelation for the group and for the individuals who continued to struggle with the non-traditional context of the seminar but eventually we all began to accept that rhythm is simply “the pattern of regular or irregular pulses caused in music or rhetoric by the occurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats” (Random House Dictionary). This transition enabled us to let go of our preconceived notions of what an honors seminar “should be” and concentrate on what it “could be” which helped us to begin to move toward a definite group rhythm. Many of us realized that our “…preferences become mapped onto the specific structure of rhythm" (Miller) and it became much more enjoyable as we relaxed into the reality of the unpredictable, exhilarating nature of the course. The lack of predictable rhythm within the wiki began to be the rhythm. As Nietzsche is known to have said about rhetoric, “The poet conveys his thoughts in festive solemnity on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they are unable to walk on their own feet.” So, by simply accepting that the seminar had a rhythm of its own, many of us were able to settle in to enjoy the journey.

For others, whose personal rhythms are reliant on predictable, concrete reality the seminar probably continued to feel like uncontrolled chaos as we toggled between our virtual environment and our group meetings. It is understandable but there are many controlling factors in life that cannot be understood. For example, “the exact nature of the internal mechanism, or ‘biological clock’” (Luce) is not readily understood and yet it controls a wide variety of concrete operations. Perhaps, for students who struggled to find their own rhythm within the group the most important aspect of the class was learning to accept things that we have no immediate control over. Eventually we all let go of our notions about conventional academia and our experiences on the wiki (and within the seminar) began to be more harmonious.

Harmony

(by Stephen)

Harmony seems to be order. It is not. It is perfect alignment of that initial chaos. Yesterday in contemporary literature class we were discussing the difference between high art and low art. It was brought up that all great literature seems ambiguous; it operates on multiple levels at the same time. In one reading of Moby Dick, the work might be a Marxist critique on the state of the decline of capitalism. On another reading it might seem that the text actually references repressed homosexuality. Art that has harmony becomes all things at all times. A Nirvana can write a song that upon first listen brims with anger or the party mentality, can evocate a mosh pity as well as tears at feeling along or at feeling that something has been lost. It can express apathy in a song that artist has clearly put his entire self into, the bloody on the fret board. Notorious B.I.G. can write rap songs about being untouchable and at the same time express grave weakness, “The weak and the strong, who got it going on? You’re dead wrong.”

On another level order is chaos. It has just been magnified to the proper level into which a pattern has appeared. Life sometimes seems disorientating and like as if it can seem to have no meaning. However, on the level of the atom, certain patterns appear constant. Then upon refocusing the atom itself is chaos. This holds constant for the order of sound. A single note sounds like perfection, however upon a different level it is the resonation of multiple levels of sound and eventually patterns of tracking each of those sounds fall apart. Rivers Cuomo keeps trying to analyze what makes a song popular via studying nirvana, the beatles, green day, and other bands that achieve popularity through songs that touch chords in people. The longer he does this, the worse and worse Weezer albums sound. Mozart’s compositions do not operate as strongly on defined patterns as many other popular composers in many aspects. Yet he is regarded, by many, to be the greatest composer to have lived.

Harmony holds astetic perfect between chaos and order as well as all opposing forces. Buddhist teaching states that “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form”, and at the same time “Emptiness is Emptiness and Form is Form”. These two seeming self exclusive things exist completely at the same time. This is called The Dharma Door of Non-Duality, in it this are opposite and the same, one cannot exist without the other, because one is the other. Bringing up a personal experience, I went to Catholic Mass for the first time in about four years. There is a part to the liturgy of the Eucharist where the Priest changes bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. This is known as transubstantiation. In Catholic Dogma, as opposed to many if not all Protestant sects, this actually takes place. It is not symbolism for something, or does not mean it changes in a spiritual way. It IS the body and blood of Christ. When it was occurring, I completely realized that it was true. Not now, and not often, but at the time I had complete faith I KNEW it was the body and blood of Christ. At the same time, I knew that it was scientifically impossible and if I were to test it, Bread and Wine would be in the container. I held two opposing thoughts to be completely true at the same time. This is an aspect of harmony as well as a type of religious experience.

Through my portion of the project I will magnify, or pull back from, chaos, to show harmony. It is always there at given levels. In one panel I will present a scene of chaos, and then show an aspect of the scene that has perfect harmony. In another panel I will have a story that on one level of reading presents war as justifiable and with another finds it odious. In a third panel I juxtapose religious beliefs with those of each other and of science in an ordered collage, to show how each opposing idea remains in perfect harmony with the others. The last scene I will show a musical note in the center on a staff. I will then show notes that ascend from it, via a cycle of fifths, fourths, how it plays a part as a root note in various modes. Then on the other side I will break the note apart showing how its reverberation is contained between the harmonics of other notes. On both sides every note is being played at once, do you hear it? OHHHHHMMMMMMM

Conclusion

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