The Invisible Gorilla

When Irve expressed shock and dismay that people looked right past our funeral as they went about their day, I assumed that those people were belligerent: purposefully unwilling to be distracted by our very beautifully haphazard distraction. As I said at the time, many people do not see art, some because they actively seem to avoid it. But what about the others?

Lo and behold: another theory comes to my attention. Actually, a theory of attention. The theory of "The Invisible Gorilla," which it turns out is the result of a very important and reputable Harvard psychology study. It showed that many people, if preoccupied by a simple task, will be unable to notice salient factors within their environment. 

Maybe, just maybe, we did encounter people whose heads were too full of numbers or algorithms or meeting schedules to even see a funeral procession going by. And what does that mean for the future of interdisciplinary art-in-the-world?

Check out the cool website for the set of Harvard experiments on attention:

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html

A zombie walk in Columbus made quite a spectacle!

Spectacle Exhibition in Dittmann 205: One Week Only!!

Perhaps, in the last few months, you have witnessed some strange, unexplained phenomena around campus. Perhaps you crossed paths with an itinerant Victorian funeral procession mourning the death of an abstract ideal. Perhaps your dinner was interrupted by a cavalcade of shadow puppets, or maybe you were simply handed a flyer inviting you to a mysterious event with no known time or date.

Now some of these mysteries can be solved--and others compounded. For the next week in Dittmann 205 (The Print Study Room) Art 240 "Creating Spectacle" is exhibiting materials and documents created during their recent performances. This semester, our students made magic with plywood, steel, butcher paper, concrete poetry, packing peanuts, accordions, elaborate state of the art sound systems, gallons of paint, miles of ribbon, saxophones and trumpets, tons of tulle, lots of spray paint, and soaker hose. But also, it must be said, the chief ingredient was inspired play.

What some critics have said about the show:

"The avant-garde is reborn for the new millennium. The use of Tyvek is nothing short of a revelation."  --Peter Sheldahl, The New Yorker

"This Cabinet of Wonders will provide the perfect study break for any student during finals week. Oh, and it honors my legacy very well." --the ghost of Guy Debord   

To find the exhibit, enter Dittmann Center from the East, and turn right at the hearse!

Play, further supported

Another take on why play is vital to our existence and evolution. A short TED talk worth your time.

FRIDAY

So I ran into this, and (timmy! don't kill me!) it's hilarious, spectacular... As Anda said, we live in an interesting world I hope you enjoy it!!

whatever we did st. olaf needs more of it. yes?

I heard the most alarming thing on Friday afternoon.

"What is this? This is so freaky and weird."

"Yeah, I know, it's sort of scary"

Now, I would have expected this from unaware observers as we paraded around in black and wailing. But no, I heard this from people walking by the quad as we PLAYED! I had no idea that sidewalk chalk and streamers were so terrifying.

But overall. I think people appreciated it. I had several people tell me that they didn't realize how little they played. Or that the play that they engaged in was play with rules and regulations and not the free, fulfilling play that they needed. I think we opened up some eyes. Sure, there were flaws in the performance. But I want to congratulate us. Even if we only reached 30 people, hopefully we have inspired them to share the message of play with others. :)

Holding off

I've greatly enjoyed reading the thoughts of those who have posted so far. I'm excited for our conversation in class today and because it is close to class time, I'm going to wait and reflect on the blog after that conversation.

And my hope for class today: I am all for critique but think it's important to remember that we critique in order to further our thinking about the art: why didn't all 200 people follow us from the chapel? why did "this little light" seem unfitting to some? let's not let the conversation end just one or two sentences after the observer has made their remark but instead, push each to consider and consider again.

Irve Dell, Play is Not Dead

Way to be a pessimist. Those people you mentioned who did not bat an eye and walked right by us - it is not that play is dead in their hearts, it's just missing in action. Like Sofia, they have to find it. Maybe we sparked a little idea in their heads, even if they weren't ready to follow it just then.
That's what I believe.

Stephen I agree with the Pastor Benson thing, we had 200+ people watching when we came around Boe and Pastor Benson spoke but then had no more than 30 people follow us all the way through. I do not remember who said it but maybe we should have engaged the audience a little more while mourning and had them cry with us. I was definitely at fault in this as well, when we were walking I was completely in the performance and have had a difficult time remembering all the details of the spectacle. I do recall the audience being an audience; we marched somewhere and they followed us we gave a eulogy and they listened, while we wailed and cried. They watched us rather than mourning with us, I do not know what we should have done to make the audience performers as well, but I think that was the major shortcoming. Seconding Sheila's comment, costumes could have used just a little bit more.

As far as positives go, the eulogies were AMAZING! Christopher, David, Joel, Nate, Pastor Benson, Siri, James, Sofia (I think that is everyone) and everyone who performed in eulogies, great job. I think everyone did a great job of conveying the idea of play dying. Christopher's poem was fantastic, I would love a copy and it has been stuck in my head all weekend. Nate, amazing puppetry. The music was also fantastic (though there was some redundancy) and fit perfectly into the funeral.

Echoing previous comments, I think we achieved what we set out to do: play. I got lost in this world of the funeral procession and was almost solely focused on mourning play that I have a hard time remembering all the details of the afternoon. We were alive and brought life to a lot of people on campus. The "sculpture", if that is the best word for it, was a perfect final testament to just creating something and playing. It might not have been the most beautiful thing in appearance, but was gorgeous in the process of its creation and embodied what we did on Friday.

Play is alive!

Great job everyone!

What could have been better?

I was inspired by Shelia's post about bringing up some of our shortcomings in our performance. I think we all can agree that our performance went great and was a success, but what could we have done better? One aspect of the performance that bothered me a little was the music. I really didn't care for "This Little Light of Mine." It just seemed more childlike than playful- something that I really wanted to stay away from. Also, the redundancy of a few of the songs. Some of them just seemed like we were singing forever. The few songs that were all instrumental I thought were amazing! (Attie can really rock that accordion). Maybe we could have had a few more of those pieces.

Another thing was with Pastor Bension's eulogy we had an enormous audience. How do we keep that audience?

What do others think we could have improved on?

Death of Play

Spectacular

So this Friday's event was, in a word, spectacular.

We got hundreds of Oles to listen and participate, we played with classmates, played with strangers, and made a scene. Pretty much exactly what we hoped for! And all of the reactions I heard were extremely positive. So: great success!

And I'm impressed.

As a class, we're a lot of thinkers, not doers. We debate well and brainstorm fantastically. Yet it took a lot of motivation to get the ball rolling on costumes, and the hearse was built by a select few class members. Yet the outcome, regardless of our piddlings, was fantastic.

Because I believe good critical thinking is always important to continuing to develop as an artist, I would like to address any potential failures/shortcomings in our event.
--The hearse was heavy and Irve's body has died. We definitely should have gotten horses! But in all seriousness I don't know if this could have been avoided. Maybe something to do with the wheel placement, but overall it was doable.
--The costumes were great . . . for the most part. But sometimes there were costumes that were just a bit uninspiring. It is a funeral, so let's wear black! No shorts, no jeans please! And it's a spectacle, so make it a costume, not regular dress! Fortunately the costume misfits were few and far between.
--Song redundancy and enthusiasm (oh no!). We got a bit out of character on 'this little light',but we recovered fantastically. And we may have gotten a little redundant (we really love 'down to the river') but I don't think it was that detrimental.
--If our chalk is responsible for the penis outbreak on campus . . . man that's unfortunate! But that's a bit out of our hands anyways.

That's all I can think of, and it's all minor! Overall this was a major success! We definitely went out with a bang.

Embodiment

One of the best things about Friday for me was that we weren't doing a piece that was simply "about" serious play, but that we were absolutely engrossed in deep play. We created worlds that we ourselves got lost in, we improvised, we problem solved (remember the spur the moment changes and plotting of the route? or how about the chapel skyway?), we laughed, cried, sang, danced, and generally were totally alive. This type of full human experiencing doesn't happen enough, and even doesn't happen like this enough on proscenium stages. It was woven into the fabric of daily life, yet also transcended and was apart from that.

I believe that we offered ourselves a chance to create something wonderful and we took it. The event had the perfect balance of planned "setness" and improvised unknowns. We had never run through it, and we didn't need to--knowing that it was all about play and discovery was enough to keep it moving. It was difficult to make a wrong move, because we could play it off and keep going.

I was so pleased with the event, and am totally inspired by this kind of work. Thanks all, for making it happen!!!

In Character

I just read Irve's post and realized that I was so engaged in our spectacle that I didn't really notice the audience/those that tried to ignore us. Should I have been more thoughtful about the audience, or is it good to be that "in character"?
I think that the mourning part of the spectacle was harder to participate in because we were not really interacting with the audience. When it came to the playing part, I think that there was excellent participation because we began interacting with the audience and our spectacle became more accessible.
Also, I loved that when Christopher was giving his eulogy we all had to sob extremely dramatically to cover up our laughter.

play is dead. for many, no. but for too many, yes. i was amazed yesterday at how many people (students and faculty alike) did not even appear to bat an eye towards us -- walked right in front of the procession their gaze fixed ahead. either we appeared too commonplace (hard to believe) or many people simply have no time/patience/need for a distraction or diversion of any kind. curiosity is dead?