Farewell to Aesthetics

Dear former students of ART1020,

I wanted to inform you that the UCONN School of Fine Arts finally cancelled my last remaining teaching contract. The Art1020 class will continue in a new form by whomever they decide to have teach it, but my relationship with the School is finished.

I very much enjoyed teaching this subject and learning from you. 

Your feedback and participation in the teaching methods and purposes allowed me to create a class that I believe responded in an unusually effective and direct way to your learning challenges and longings.

Unfortunately, the institutional culture, both at the School of Fine Arts and at UCONN in general, appears to have little interest in what actually happens in the classroom, or in innovative experiments in improving the learning experience of students. 

Towards the interest of improving the experience of students at the SFA and UCONN in general, I would offer you a philosophical provocation. Many of you spoke passionately about your feelings regarding your educational experience at UCONN and felt some of the practices we engaged in ART1020 were especially helpful. If you are moved to do so, I would invite you to express how you feel about the fact that ART1020 as I structured it will no longer be offered, in a letter to the Dean of the School of Fine Arts or whomever you think may be interesting in listening. 

If you do choose to express yourself, do not do so for my benefit as I am choosing to move on, but for the sake of the art school and the education of future students at UCONN generally.

You are most welcome to visit Jen and I at the Sanctuary (www.oursanctuary.org).  

All Change is Good.

Sincerely Yours, 

Justin 

Concluding Remarks and Recommended Readings for ART 1020

Dear philosophers -

You all did a great job this semester. Thank you for your openness to learning, your mindfulness training, and your sharing of your experiences. I've learned much from you all and wish you well on your Path.  

Some of you asked me to recommend books on some topics we discussed. Below is a list of some of the books that have been important to me in recent years. Enjoy these treasures and feel free to email me or come visit us at the Sanctuary. We run a weekly meditation every Sunday 12 Noon to 1 PM, followed by a discussion group from 1 to 2 PM. These events are open to the public and all beings are welcome. That's a good time to visit, and you can take a hike on our 40 acre land trust. Dogs welcome too. It has been a pleasure being your learning partner this semester.  

Philosophy and Spirituality

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Christopher Bache, Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life

James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

Gabriel Cousens, Spiritual Nutrition

A Course in Miracles

Ram Das, Be Here Now

Eagle Man, Spirituality for America

Shakti Gawan, Meditations

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Stephen Mitchell, Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance over Time

Krishnamurti, Total Freedom

Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

Plato, Republic

Poems of Rumi

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Gary Renard, Disappearance of the Universe

Sharon Salzberg & Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation Workbook

Rupert Sheldrake, Science Set Free

Russell Targ, The Reality of ESP

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Ken Wilber, Integral Spirituality

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

The Upanishads

Environmentalism, Development, Politics

Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

David Holmgren, Permaculture: Pathways Beyond Sustainability

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

Bill Mckibben, Eaarth

Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

John Zerzan (ed.) Against Civilization

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Money and the Gift

Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years

Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money

Stephen Zarlenga, The Lost Science of Money

E. F. Schumacher, "Buddhist Economics"

Art

Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion

Alex Grey, The Mission of Art

Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order (vol. 1-4)

Kurt Vonnegut, Blue Beard

Arthur Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace

Michael Nyman, Experimental Music

Aliens

Richard Dolan, UFOs for the 21st Century Mind
Budd Hopkins and Carol Rainey, Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings

Ken Carey, Return of the Bird Tribes
Leslie Kean, UFOS: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record

John Mack, Passport to the Cosmos

Whitley Strieber, Communion

Dolores Cannon , The Custodians

Some of my writings

"A Buddhist Energy Audit of Your Soul"

"Education As If People Mattered"

If you are interested in technical philosophy or Wittgenstein, you can check out my book, Wittgenstein and the Theory of Perception (based on my Ph.D. dissertation, led me to my teaching style, looks at philosophical questions surrounding theories of perception)

Oh, and my band, The Grays
And a Pinterest page with some of my drawings

Endgame for ART1020

Final project due in class on Thurs. Dec. 8th 
(or via email by Thurs. Dec. 15th)

Dear Philosophers, just a reminder that you have until next Thursday, Dec. 15th to get me any work you haven't submitted, emailed to me at VOOD@CUMMINGS-GOOD.COM. Good luck!

Option One: Quest/ion Essay

Based on the questions you’ve been developing in your journal, this project give you the opportunity to develop and sharpen your key personal philosophical question/issue. What is the (or a) key question for you? How do you sharpen that question? How do you devise a plan – an experiment or attitudinal adjustment or research idea – into order to work towards an answer? This writing assignment (4-5 pages) can take the form of an analytical-argumentative paper or a more narrative or creative paper.

Option Two: Technology Abstinence Meditation

REQUIREMENTS: 1) Abstinence Experiment, 2) Creative Expression, 3) 4 page interpretation 

AIM: To understand and express artistically your relationship with the technologies in your life that you depend on everyday. 

Instructions: This project is has three parts. 

(1) Choose a technology/medium, or a combination thereof, that you use, on a daily basis and that is important to you. DO WITHOUT the use of that medium for a period of 100 hours (approx. 4 days). Some examples of media: email, cellphone, instant messenger, video games, TV, cars, clothing, typography, spoken language, digital screens, shoes, i-pods and stereos, refrigerator, as well as mood-enhancement technologies such as caffeine, salt, alcohol, etc.) 

(2) Create, in any medium, a self-portrait (of the artist) – that is, of YOU – as a user of a technology. Your self-portrait should explore the truth of your relationships to the technologies that matter to you. How does your use of them shape your attention, relations to other, sense of self, priorities, values, etc? 

(3) Write a 4 page essay explaining your portrait and relating it to ONE of the following questions: 

What is the media ecology of the technologies you abstained from? 

How much technology is too much? 

How do we learn to be present to each other and to ourselves? 

What are the struggles with avoiding being programmed by our use of digital media and how do we overcome them? 

What would REAL PROGRESS in social evolution look like?

Option Three: Mindfulness Practice Framework

Form: Creation of a meditation space in your abode, a one month meditation plan, together with a 4 page writing reflection. Your writing should focus on what meditation is, the psychological theory behind it, connections to worldview or whatever angle is most useful in your own attempts to understand it, etc. Create a meditation space / altar and document your space with a photograph. For the creation of the meditation space, be as minimal or elaborate as you feel is appropriate. Then come up with a realistic meditation plan for the next 4 weeks. Be realistic but a little ambitious too. Try to keep to your plan. At the end, congratulate yourself for your new Jedi mind skills.

Option Four: Reflection on the Purpose of Education

This class has been designed as an experimental departure from many standard practices used for teaching in higher education. If you found these departures interesting or useful to you, you can use your final project as an opportunity to reflect on your college experience, and on what our seminar has revealed or served as an alternative to. What should education strive to offer? How well does this work given standard teaching/classroom practices in college? Did the experimental methods you experienced during our class highlight any limitations on conventional practices or suggest other aspects of learning which are important for growth?

Stanton Friedman’s Basic Argument for the ET Hypothesis

1. SOME UFOS are Real

That is, approx. 10-20% of all UFO sightings cannot be explained, and the evidence points to the fact that they are Intelligently-Controlled craft using design principles, propulsion systems and materials science which transcend any known technologies. There are 10s of thousands of reliable reports, and 4 large scale scientific studies of those reports which support this conclusion.

2. There is a COSMIC WATERGATE about ET.

In other words, there is a world-wide cover-up of this phenomenon; A small cabal of very-powerful intelligence, military, political and economic interests, which control the classification of all evidence of ET visitation. Tis policy of denial is held in place by secrecy mechanisms established in the US in the 1940s with the creation of the National Security State (CIA, NSA, Pentagon, and 17 other intelligence agencies.)

3. The ET Hypothesis can be debunked but not honestly denied.

All plausible arguments against Proposition 1 above are based on ignorance. Ergo, there are NO plausible arguments against 1. (Debunking is the opposite of skepticism by the way. Whereas true skepticism holds beliefs open to revision by evidence which contradicts those beliefs, debunking assumes that something is true or not true, and then finds evidence to support that pre-drawn conclusion. 

3. The advent of ET visitation of Earth is the MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN HUMAN HISTORY

Which makes it especially strange that there is total blackout of this issue in mainstream politics, science, academia and media.

12/6 • Introduction to Exophilosophy (Extraterrestrial Contact)

Texts for this class

1. Stanton Friedman, "The Case for the Extraterrestrial Origin of Flying Saucers"

2. Five Large Scale Scientific Studies Prove that ETs are Real and Here



Other resources

General Arthur Exon, junior officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where the Roswell debris was allegedly brought in 1947: “They knew they had something new in their hands.” 

The 1952 UFO wave over Washington D.C.

May 11, 1950 photos by the Trents

Photographs of UFOs

The Gulf Breeze 1995 video

Mexican Air Force video of UFO (2004)

3. Video: Testimony of FAA Division Chief who investigated JAL 1628.

Blog for PH199 Exophilosophy

Dr. Vood's Alien TV, my YouTube channel

• Presentation on the Philosophy of Money & Banking Reform

• HR 6550 Banking reform bill

• The Community Exchange System

Dear Philosophers of Art, please note that email justin@oursanctuary.org is currently out of order. Please use this email for all communication: VOOD@CUMMINGS-GOOD.COM. Thanks!

12/1 • The Gift Theory of Art & Philosophy of Money and Wealth

The artist appeals to that part

of our being... which is a gift and not

an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring.

                 Joseph Conrad

Texts for this class on Thurs. 12/1

(1) Introduction to Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

(2) Charles Eisenstein, "Money: A New Beginning"

(3) The documentary "Money and Life"


Other recommended resources on this topic

(4) HR2990 Monetary Reform Act (recent legislation to reform the US banking system)

(5) "Beyond Greed and Scarcity: An Interview with Bernard Lietaer"

(6) Flyer about the Connecticut Sound Shares Exchange

(7) David Korten on the difference between money and wealth

11/29 • The Anti-Narcotic Theory of Art

Dear class, we will be discussing Marshall McLuhan's theory of art as an anti-narcotic solution to technological numbing and addiction. 

“The ARTIST is a person who is especially aware of the challenge and dangers of new environments. Whereas the ordinary person seeks security by numbing his perceptions against the impact of new experience, the artist delights in this novelty and instinctively creates situations that both reveal it and compensate for it.” – Marshall McLuhan

Readings

1. Alice Rae, "Art (Anti-environment)"
2. Darren Werschler, "Artists as RADAR: McLuhan reading poetry"

Technical knowledge cannot solve the problem of numbness since technical knowledge is always about how to do something, not why something should be done or how personal and social identity are unconsciously altered by the use of a technological solution to a problem. So what kind of knowledge can help us avoid cultural narcosis? Only ART can. 

Art is the ability to overcome perceptual dissonance, not by becoming numb to the dissonance, but by REVEALING it, and therefore discovering a new way to reach a DEEPER LEVEL OF EQUILIBRIUM with the environment. The artist bridges the gap between past and future, reveals the dangers of the new media environment to others, unifies her experience rather than remaining fragmented, studies the distortions of experience created by our OUT-OF-BALANCE RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE, is the canary in the mineshaft warning us of spiritually-poisonous ways of relating to each other and the world, allows us to accept our experiences for what they truly are, frees our mind. 

Artists are the only people who actually live in the Present. The technical side of art is the technology of creating effects. The artist can see the present environment because she studies how to reproduce effects of the environment, but in a way that slows down the process to make it perceivable.

Class cancelled tonight, Thurs. Nov. 17

Dear Philosophers of Art, class is cancelled tonight. Please have a relaxing and unproductive break, and check in with this blog on Monday for more instructions. Peace! Justin

Presentation on the Anti-Narcotic Theory of Art

11/10 Technological Singularity, Transhumanism and Grey Goo

Texts for Thurs. 11/10

1. Read:  Interview with Ray Kurzweil on Singularity

2. Watch: Film "Singularity or Bust"

Presentation on Media Ecology

11/8 Before Technology

Texts
1. Read: Helena Norberg-Hodge, "Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh"
2. Watch: "Columbus Arrival at Turtle Island" from the documentary 500 Nations

11/3 • Introduction to media ecology and the anti-narcotic theory of art

Required Texts 

1. Famous interview with Marshall McLuhan,  the Prophet of technology, and inventor of media ecology.

2. Read "Media Ecology for Beginners" below.

Media Ecology of Beginners; Or, Guide to Marshall McLuhan’s theory of media and art  By Justin Good

§1. Ecological definition of medium-technology. Technology as an environment.

Media (technology) always must be understood as an extension of the human mind-body. This is a broader definition of a medium than is usually meant, since it applies not just to communication but every technological innovation starting with language. By altering the relationship between our self-system and the environmental systems within which we live, we unintentionally cause changes to both our self and the environment. Because media are extensions of our mind body, We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

E.g. Clothing extends skin, shoes extend soles of feet, chairs extend the back, automobiles extend legs and stomach, phonetic literacy extends eyes and mind, electric media extend the entire nervous system.

§2. Psychological obstructions to studying media-technologies. The medium is the message.

As extensions of our body-mind, our use of media technologies changes us psychologically and socially. There are two basic reasons why it is very difficult for us to become aware of these changes.

• Rearview-mirror view of the world

The immediate sensory environment – the context within which things are experienced - is itself very difficult to experience because it ‘saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly.’ Perception is always only aware of changes in the field of awareness. Unless the field of awareness is itself changing quickly, it cannot become an object of perception. So we tend to experience the present in terms the prior environment which is visible from the outside.

• Narcissus narcosis, or Auto-amputation

Extensions of the human mind-body result in new relationships between our perceptual and bodily capacities, disrupting our self-system and giving rise to auto-protective measures, i.e. numbness (psychic anaesthesia, emotional dissociation, PTSD. One part of the system is isolated from the other parts in order to protect the whole nervous system. Our use of technologies easily becomes addictive, where we block out the psychic dissonance of the new media environment by absorbing ourselves in sense of control offered by the new technology.

§3. Ecological study of technology requires holism. Pattern recognition vs. classification.

Because the environment is not a thing but a changing network of relationships which itself shapes our attention and awareness, there is no technical or specialized study of media ecology. An effective approach must be flexible, creative, not rooted in a particular theory or fixed point of view, and general enough to ‘encompass the entire environmental matrix which is in constant flux.’ Traditionally Artists have been the only people to develop this approach to perceiving ground rather than just figure.

§4. Art as anti-narcotic.

Technical knowledge cannot solve the problem of numbness since technical knowledge is always about how to do something, not why something should be done or how personal and social identity are unconsciously altered by the use of a technological solution to a problem. So what kind of knowledge can help us avoid cultural narcosis? Only ART can. Art is the ability to overcome perceptual dissonance, not by becoming numb to the dissonance, but by REVEALING it, and therefore discovering a new way to reach a DEEPER LEVEL OF EQUILIBRIUM with the environment. The artist bridges the gap between past and future, reveals the dangers of the new media environment to others, unifies her experience rather than remaining fragmented, studies the distortions of experience created by our OUT-OF-BALANCE RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE, is the canary in the mineshaft warning us of spiritually-poisonous ways of relating to each other and the world, allows us to accept our experiences for what they truly are, frees our mind. Artists are the only people who actually live in the Present. The technical side of art is the technology of creating effects. The artist can see the present environment because she studies how to reproduce effects of the environment, but in a way that slows down the process to make it perceivable.

§5. Mcluhan’s conceptual toolbox for enhancing pattern recognition. Ideas as probes.

Marshall Mcluhan’s approach is pragmatic, not about explaining technological change but exploring and revealing its unconscious effects on personal and social behavior, experience and self-awareness. His many obwservations can be fit into three basic ways to approach the study of technology: (1) historical studies of the interface between technological innovation and social/psychological change, (2) hot-cool information interface characteristics, and (3) the tetrad form, or the four laws of media.

(a) Environmental history of technology

Looking at the history of technology is a powerful way to see patterns in experience which are otherwise impossible to perceive in the present environment. An overview of western history reveals that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate than by the content of the communication. Mcluhan’s analysis reveals four basic technological epochs which are defined in terms of the primary vehicle of communication: oral, phonetic-literate, typographic, and electric.

Pre-literate 1.00,000 - 4000 BCE
Phonetic Literate 4000 BCE -1500 CE
Typographic Literacy 1500 - 1950
Post-literacy (retribalized) 1850 - 2010?

People living within these different periods have different experiences of space/time, different sensory balances, different ideas about knowledge, reality, causality, different social,political and economic institutions, and different self-conceptions.

(b) Hot-cool information interface characteristics

All media technologies can be compared with respect to the quality of their interface with the human mind.

HOT medium:
• extends a single sense
• offers high definition (complete filling in of) information
• little completion or active participation by recipient req.
• tends to exclude (sense from awareness, individual from group)
• leads to specialization, fragmentation
• numbs larger awareness, lessens total perception
• short, intense experiences
• tends to hijack attention

COOL medium:
• extends multiple senses
• offers low definition (incomplete filling in of) information
• requires high participation, active completion
• tends to include/integrate information and individuals into communities)
• leads to generalization, consolidation
• engages background awareness
• longer, sustained experiences

Note 1: The temperature of a medium is relative to the comparison and the terms are not meant as categories but as tools of comparison.

Note 2: Since every medium, with the possible exception of human awareness or consciousness, takes another medium for its content, one must be careful to distinguish the interface medium from the content medium when determining the temperature of the interface.

(c) Four ecological laws of media.

The environmental effects of technological innovations can be classified according to four laws of media which articulate four aspects involved in technological change. Normally, we only think of the first two categories of change.

• ENHANCE: What does the new medium improve or enhance, make possible or accelerate
• OBSOLESCE: What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium?
• RETRIEVE: What earlier action or service is brought back into play by the new form? What older, previously obsolesced ground is brought back and becomes an essential part of the new form?
• REVERSE: When pushed to its limits, of its potential, the new form will reverse what was its original characteristics. What is the potential reversal of the new form?

E.g. Automobile: enhance speed, obsolesces horse and buggy, retrieves nomadism, reverses into gridlock.
Cellphone: enhances voice, obsolesces phone booth, retrieves childhood yelling, reverses freedom into being a leash.
Capitalism: enhances liberty (of trade), obsoleses community responsibility, retrieves hunter-gatherer patterns, reverses abundance into starvation-scarcity.

§6. Themes from the environmental history of technology

(a) Visuality, literacy and detribalization •

Many of our modernist assumptions, regarding either the neutrality or the intrinsic goodness of technological development, have obscured the cultural sacrifice we made in leaving oral-tribal society, which had established a balance with the environment, a harmonious internal balance of sensory experiences, a stable economic and political order, a deeply immersive involvement in the world. Literacy and symbolic consciousness generally, spreads our awareness past the present into the past and future, and into abstract possibilities which empowers us while at the same time impoverishing and dimming down the fullness of our experience. Literacy extends vision into a master sense, leading to the detached, linear, systematizing mentality of rationalism. Vision can touch without being touched.

(b) Civilization has been a process of imbalance, ecological Instability, system slippage •

Depression, mental illnesses, apathy, drug addictions and other compulsive-obsessive behaviors occur in ‘civilized’ or ‘modern’ societies, i.e. societies suffering from a continuous process of uncontrolled explosion/implosion, creating perpetual disequilibrium and stress from constant perceptual dissonance. Some technologies that are involved with our current civilizational disequilibrium with the world: phonetic literacy and typography, automobiles, paper/digital currency system, electricity, internet, totalitarian agriculture, certain ideas about: development, what it means to be human, to be happy, to be in control, to be alive. The ills of technology have nothing to do with it being unnatural, but with its introducing perpetual disequilibrium into a process which strives for equilibrium or BALANCE. Is there a way out of this pattern?

(c) Electric culture, space-time compaction and retribalization

Electric media do not merely extend one sense, they extend the entire nervous system, therefore extending self-awareness or consciousness past the body-defined self. The virtually instantaneous effect of electricity speeds up the form of every technology, leading to the establishment of a truly global consciousness (noosphere). We are now faced with trying to understand the infinite ramifications of INFORMATION SOCIETY while we still have time to effect its development. A key tension concerns the differences between the SELF as a disembodied, placeless cyberanimal which simply processes information and the self as a living being connected, and needing to be connected to a place and a time.

(d) Ethics of technology: comfort versus joy

Ignorance is not blissful, it is at best comfortable. True bliss requires optimal experience: i.e. a balance between being challenged and being in control. Technology presents us with a basic problem: how do we avoid narcissus narcosis in the use of new technologies?