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Creative Synthesis Opportunity No. 1

To round out the first unit, "That's No Moon, That's A Space Station!", I would like us all to take the opportunity to do a creative synthesis, which will undergo a peer critique next week, on July 7th.

The opportunity (it's not an assignment, but I would appreciate it if everyone gave it a shot) is to synthesize a landscape or image-scene in a science fictional scenario. Given that the genre is broad, the opportunity is broad. The criteria are brief. First, it can be in any medium you desire - written, drawn, painted, spoken, photographed, danced, telepathed, etc. Second, it can be any length or size you want, though if you're preparing a written work, I would say to aim for between 4-10 pages, for the sake of the reviewers' time. Third, while exercizing creative freedom, you should try as best as possible to communicate your intended work concisely and clearly.

Since this is our first synthesis, I imagine there will be questions about what to do, so feel free to talk amongst yourselves and to me about ideas, or concerns. The synthesis is meant to be fun, and it's meant to be a rough draft only.

The peer critique will take place on July 7th, but I would like everyone to have their works ready for review by no later than the evening of the 5th. Does this seem fair? I imagine this being necessary more for a written work, but for other media, would a review and critique all in one night sound good? In other words, we won't see what you've made until the 7th, and then give feedback in class? Yes, let's plan on that.

So, to reiterate:
Come up with a landscape or image-scene in any media, of whatever reasonable length/size, and be clear in your expression. We'll critique on the 7th.

Following the critique, if you'd like to revisit your work immediately, then we'll look at it again on the 14th, otherwise, whenever you'd like to show it again. Remember, it's all for fun's sake!

These are three links from Newspaper Blackout Poems (2), which we will be using for this week, and Bernadette Meyer's and Charles Bernstein's Experiments List, from which I drew for some of the exercises. This list is widely available in various forms on the internet. I will also update my own list of experiments and post them on here as well, but that will probably be after the class.

Hey everyone! This week is our last class. I would love to see 12 bright shiny faces at class -- so even if you haven't come to one before, come to this one! Also we'll be doing evaluations for the class, so come and fill out an evaluation and just meet people!

Here's our group poem from this week:

The last tie I went to a funeral, I couldn't believe what I saw.
Three clowns were marching up and down the aisle
whisper under tehir breaths about whose nose what reddest and whose shoes loudest.
Tapp shoes are loud, loud and tappy. Tappy -- is that even a word?
My mind often diverges in such a way
twisting and turning, my thoughts
began to manifest in the expression of my neighbors eyebrows, as my fingers --
eyebrows are odd things. They're there for what?
To catch things before they fall into your eyes?