final project

Today we wrapped up the final collaborative project for this semester. I think it was quite successful. Many thanks to Casey for sharing his poetry with us. The whole process made me think of a few things that we might change.

First, I think it would be interesting to consider hearing the entire poem before any writing started. It was very hard to hear the poem being read over the noise of writing on a chalk board - I know that is not very loud, but more so than expected because of a) acoustics and b) writing on a board and not a part of the wall creating echoes. I would have also liked to have heard the poem prior to starting because I was torn between reading what was being written or listening to the poem. I felt the poem really deserved my attention and dually wanted to see what was being picked up by the writer however, it went by so quickly that I felt like I had missed both. That being said, I probably would have taken a minute to look at the writing on the boards with the tape remaining. Looking back, it may have been nice to just take a moment to review what people had heard during the process- looking at the selective hearing of the participants.

I really enjoyed watching people try to put the puzzling words back together. I think that if we had taken more time there might not have been such confusion over some of the words in the end. On the other hand, I think this confusion was what sparked the furious tape sorting at the end. It's too hard to NOT know what is supposed to be up there. I was even more glad that there was some sort of tape unfurling as I knew that where I had written 'all' someone else had turned it and the word in before it into 'succession'. Don't ask me how that happened, I really have no idea.

Anyways, I thought that it was a really successful project. If it were to be performed again, I might change those things- but maybe not. They really made it a part of the moment and of the excitement in seeing the idea carried out. I'll write more as I process over the week...