Link to What's New This Week Debriefing the Ghosts of Naked Space

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Naked Space

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: July 12, 2004
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Latest Update: July 12, 2004
E-Mail Icon jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Index of Topics on Site Debriefing the Ghosts of Naked Space

On Monday, July 12, 2004, jeanne responded:

I decided the best way to handle this dialog was just that, dialog. So my bits are in blue:

On Wednesday, July 7, 2004, Michael Griffin wrote:

Jeanne,

Once and again you have been burning the candle at both end’s,,, kudos', great puppy's, and I must say your Arnold must be achieving sainthood.......

Arnold is not achieving sainthood. He's fussing. A lot. Of course, he keeps bringing me articles and telling me I need to put them up. That's what I love - consistent male linear logic . . .

I was reading through your expose on the Harvard provost's page and you have nailed it on the head again....

Hmmm . . . I think "expose" assumes that our readers will believe that we have pointed out a "truth" they had not seen. I think they're more likely to think that we've missed "THE truth." Remember, privilege depends on where you're positioned. Notice Catherine Ludwig's virtual barrier that plays with terrestrial light. Gee, I like playing with "terrestrial light." It's almost as good as Naked Space.

Yes, all those disciplines and most every other one are "required" for the liberal arts education you ascribe to. Grass roots movements are successful because they eliminate the need to involve the bureaucracy, once you reach critical mass, they (the bureaucrats) soon realize the wave of the future that is coming will not lift them up and carry them along with the surfers unless they get on board. So self preservation takes over and powers that be master the new influence and make it their own, thus subverting it and the whole darn begins again.

Now, that's bureaucratization, and the ritualistic formalization of tasks within the bureaucracy, because within the bureaucracy you've got to tell people what to do or they'll say, "I don't know what to do." Maybe we should banish that phrase from all languages. Replace it with something like "let me see what I might do . . ." I thiink that's what Weber had in mind when he spoke of the "iron cage." Terrestrial light does one thing - follows the direction of its source . . . virtual columns interdependent with real viewers are, well, simply not in the job description.

Perhaps Einstein was onto something when he said" With the advent of nuclear power everything has changed except "man's" way of thinking. Sexist as it is, he has a valid point, and I believe my way of thinking changed, mayhap evolved through the "Naked Space" experience.

Well, thinking is more than linear and rational and conscious. I think it's rather much to believe that the Naked Space experience could have in and of itself accomplished a paradigm shift or evolution. But maybe not. Maybe its like the new physics concept of the earth as two dimensional with gravity slithering off the edge. Once our Naked Space is open enough to allow us to think such thoughts, once our gravity discovers in our virutal reproduction as we think of it, maybe it just really gets into that slithering and other things follow right after. Nag me to link to the piece on gravity slithering over the brane. Was that in Scientific American or an astrophysics site? I'll have to link to it or my colleagues will insist it's a mere figment of my whacko imaginary.

How does one incorporate all those disciplines you mentioned? Unless from the unified field theory you teach them all because you have had the experience. Those disciplines outside your sphere of influence are taught by those with different agendas than you have.

Good question, Michael. But easy answer. One incorporates the by "vörsorge." Fore-worry, a German word from German green philosophy, in which one recognizes from the start that there are only so many basic social and human questions, and that all disciplines seek to answer them from their own perspective, which in no way forecloses any of the other perspectives. The "worry" part there comes from the recognition that all these disciplines (including astrophysics AND particle physics) affect each other, for as Rosemary Ruether say, everything is interrelated.
And they all share a common denominator; when we specialize we limit, as we become "specialized" we decrease our over all effectiveness. Sort of like when a student works full time and attempts to carry 18 or more units... Not to mention being usually a wife, mother, sister, or in extreme cases a single mom. Whew....
I agree, especiall with the "Whew..." Specialty comes with the complexity. From one perspective, it makes sense; it let's us produce more surplus product for profit (of whatever kind, not necessarily money). The problem comes with capitalism's distortion of profit from capital that can be re-invested to better the entire social complex, into the reified accumulation of wealth and display of excess. I am reminded here of the "longwall" concept in mining. Miners are much happier when they can perform all the necessary functions along a mining wall to extract the ore. Each one gets to engage in various functions of the extraction. But no amount of corporate counseling has been able to get mining companies to adapt that process because greater profit accrues when each miner does repeatedly one deadening task over and over. The Ford factory method. Devoid of humanity, devoid of meaning, devoid of deeper association and thought.

Your poor student, in addition to being, wife, mother, sister, etc. does the same tasks each day because, like the mine, the household fares better when the "one" who does that best does it repeatedly, and the others do other tasks repeatedly. Then she goes to school, already deadened by the alienation of daily life to any natural meaning, and goes from class to class, each with a syllabus just like the other, and does the same thing in each class. She hardly notices that the nuggets are changing in color, in feel, in porosity, in hardness, and she hasn't the slightest idea why she's collecting them, except to be a teacher and supervise the same process in her turn.

What is then "Naked Space" ?

I experienced an awakening, first and foremost to the children, then the connection to family, students, and then community. That is a simplistic overview and words fail to identify the experience, which I believe is a good thing. It can hardly be explained any more than it was planned, it was going to be an "Art" show, it was and much more.

Art may be the medium which best describes the experience, as the beauty of art is in the eye of the beholder, like "Naked Space" it has to be experienced, where one actually participates. Either by doing the art work or just taking it in, the photos of the exhibits do not elicit the response the community activity spawned, except I am biased as some of the photos elicit a memory.

Good question, Michael. But easy answer. One incorporates the by "vörsorge." Fore-worry, a German word from German green philosophy, in which one recognizes from the start that there are only so many basic social and human questions, and that all disciplines seek to answer them from their own perspective, which in no way forecloses any of the other perspectives. The "worry" part there comes from the recognition that all these disciplines (including astrophysics AND particle physics) affect each other, for as Rosemary Ruether say, everything is interrelated.

May "Naked Space" be a way to unite rather than limit and divide? Is it in the experience of "community" we find our collective bond? In those few moments where the art catches our eye, engages the senses and we find a place where expression takes flight. There were no art critics, no naysayers, it wasn't even about the art per se, it was a reflection of the humanity of those who got involved. The moms who engaged their children and gave them an outlet to be themselves no matter what came about; it was all art, art of expression.

I like a lot of the points you make, Michael. First, that it started with the children. Yes, I think it did. Not just the little ones, but the big ones, too. These first exhibits, though we were pretty self conscious about them, were places where we stopped in the midst of putting them up to laugh and play. Something went wrong? What'll we do? Giggle. Make smart remarks. And just keep stringing the popcorn on the Christmas tree. So one of the kids ate some of the popcorn. So? Those were all childlike, playful responses. At play, you don't quit playing because a piece gets lost or broken. You just pick up another piece and change the rules a little. No one was in charge. Even when someone purported to be the rest of us just went on doing our thing. I don't know how that fits as community, but I think it does. We were determined that the Exhibit should be OK. But we were very loose in our definition of what would make it OK. Maybe like a bunch of kids putting on a play? Serous, but not overwrought, because we were welcoming the visitors to participate, and who knew what they would do? I deefnitely think you have something with the "engaging the senses." Some of our students, at both exhibits, went home the first day and made projects to bring back for exhibit the next day. I keep thinking of that virutal column in Ludwig's work. But even the virtual column was fixed, operating according to rules, just interactive. In the Naked Space exhibits might come and go with the spirit of things. What would the virtual column people said if someone took it off? But I remember when one art teacher demanded that her student turn in one of his projects for a "grade." I yelped. He yelped. She won. But nobody minded that one piece of his exhibit was missing, and we got to talk a lot about monologic non-answerability. A different result. But it didn't seem to matter. I certainly didn't come away feeling that it was a flaw in our exhibit. I worried more about her soul.

All who participated and attended carried away with them the energies and humanity of those who created the space. And in so doing enlarged the space, their experience was carried out into the world to be shared with those who cross their paths.

Gee, I hope you're right. What a neat thing to do. What a neat way to contribute to peace, to really doing something about peace.

Perceptions are so easily influenced with all the media exposure we have today. Being open to the commercialism is worrisome, but being open does have it advantages. The media, visual and audio sociology is but another string on the media continuum. This medium, visual sociology has ushered in another way in which we might study the phenomena and it's impact without ever really knowing what "Naked Space" is. Whatever it is, so far at least, it seems repeatable on some level, or we just set the stage as it were and let the humanity of community do the magik.

I think you say that very well, Michael. The combination of media are producing something we can't define, but we can feel it, respond to it, sort of describe it in a momentary flash, with the same media that are enabling us to produce it. It's not all text, not even multimedia text, and it's not all discourse, because a chunk of it is spiritual. I decided yesterday that I absolutely must teach Love !A again. Out of the blue! I suspect that Love !A is part of it, too. And It's repeatable. Methodologically, that's terribly important. We're not just out there in amorphous space. We're using tangible tools, and we're using them consistently enough to measure their effects.

My sense of the spiritual is all tied up in my sense of myself and the world perception I carry. It is my intention to manifest peace and prosperity on a global scale. Administrations in this country will come and go, but the people of the planet will remain. We can no longer allow the realities of this government to diminish our resolve. Castro has outlasted nine presidents. Regardless of this political nightmare, one that we all need to wake up from, the world we believe in will be the world we create. Our experiment showed me a glimmer of what community looks like when viewed from a place devoid of fear and judgment. It wasn't planned, but the intentions of the people who were involved manifested a reality, which we all shared on some level. Those spiritual underpinnings and our own humanity brought people together where the art of expression found form, in the individual projects and the projects which continue.

This is something, which draws me in. It is still a mystery or magik and that may be part of the allure. Maybe the whole idea is over inflated, but I think not. There seems to be something there, wherever "there" is.

More incessant ramblings...

Michael

Beautiful ending, Michael. Me, too. jeanne

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, July 2004.
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