October Meeting Notes

We discussed the article about Collapse and the associated videos.  Points of discussion  included:

• The role of sound in performances
• How it was difficult to take in the images and the dancing simultaneously.  This created a distance between the audience and the performance piece
• What was communicated.  Some felt the interpretation of collapse in the dance portion was very literal and could have been better developed.  It took a while to get used to looking at the imagery and therefore what it was communicating.
• How to make sure the audience is getting out of a performance what the artist(s) want
• Scientists seemed to gain from exposure to art (in terms of how they now conceptualize their own work).  It was not clear the performance artists re-conceptualized their work as a result of the interaction
• Choice of theme for an art/science collaboration seems important, if the ideal is that both groups are working toward producing an integrated whole
• Difficult to determine how much the scientists understood about the artist’s work and vice versa
• There was interest in having knowledge of situations in which scientists approach artists for collaboration as well as when artists approach scientists.  We discussed the example of educators turning to artists to help them communicate difficult concepts  to their students
• We came back to the issue of art as a method of communication as well as of exploration, and the importance of using art to communicate science.  It was noted that art as exploration can be especially valuable if it leaves the audience hungry to know more about the scientific topic explored, vs. producing a reaction that the performance was simply interesting
• Forest and its more interactive format puts greater responsibility on the audience than Collapse, a performance that is passively received.

 

In moving from the discussion of Collapse to what this means for how we prepare for and structure the Forest residency, we discussed

• The type of background we would provide to the audience
• The importance of engaging a variety of courses/departments in the residency
• The importance of engaging both performance/theatre studies students as well as environmental science students in the residency (the actual work of Forest)
• How we might obtain feedback from the audience about what they thought about the performance (surveys, talk backs, etc)

 

We would like to move forward with a primary focus on Forest during our next meeting, but also a focus on discussing a group member’s work:

• Given that we would like to submit a grant justifying the need for funding to bring Forest to campus, we would like to:
  • Discuss the variety of courses that should be engaged for Forest.  Suggestions welcomed for courses in these departments:
    • Art, Art History, Visual Studies
    • Biology
    • Economics
    • Education
    • English
    • Environmental Engineering
    • Environmental Science and Policy
    • History
    • Music
    • Public Policy
    • Religion
    • Theater Studies

Suggestions for additional departments/courses welcome

• Discuss ideas for prompts that might be used in these courses
• Discuss whether/how we might obtain letters of support from various departments/organizations to pair with our grant application
  • Duke Carbon Offsets
  • WGELA
  • Duke Forest