THE INTERNET AND IDENTITY

As I have reflected since my romance with WWW began in the early 1990s, I am struck by the realization that this new medium enabled me to explore identity as process, in which reflection becomes a deeper transaction in fabric of discovery. As the Chair of a dynamic, evolving multidisciplinary department, I purchased the first computers for the department, and as the Arpanet became the Internet, we were one of the first music departments in the world to have a website, for which I wrote the code. As I tried to interest my colleagues in this new medium by suggesting that in a couple of years we wouldn't need bulletins because students would be choosing schools on the Internet, I was generally dismissed as being a fanatic.

I began to explore the idea of on line courses and several of those classes still survive although by today's standards they are somewhat pristine. Even so, there were the kernels of some good ideas. One that I remember is The Creative Process. Despite its age, the site remains strangely relevant to our inquiry. Not everything survives from this ancient website, there are some corrupt movie files, but one can see the foundations of what became IMPACT.  The following quote from the website illustrates:

  Notice how technology has also shrunk our perception of the world, and in some ways perhaps tended to homogenize cultures into a world culture. This is probably the greatest fear that confronts us about technology: that we are blended into a mass of humanity serving science and technology within the dictates of a new world order. Yet, this is a reactionary fear, and not at all at the root of the problem. Robert M. Pirsig in Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance focuses the problem of the meeting of East and West in a new context, of an indutrialized Western World intersecting with the metaphysics of Eastern modalities, of a different knowing of reality:

"The real cycle you're working on is the cycle called 'yourself.'""The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motocycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon."

The motorcycle is a metaphor for Western industrialized culture and technology encountering a process of deep knowing and involvement emanating from the East. Within his quest for excellence and quality, Pirsig confronts the demons of himself, and helps us share in his personal, inner "Chautauqua." Chautauquas were tent shows which once "moved across America...in an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer." Now you are calling yourself to your own Chautauqua...your own quest (questioning)... ...your own discovering in the workshop of yourself.

As I began to Blog, I found that a Blog could serve as a journal, but it is also enables your reflections to become objects of thought in which you see yourself looking at yourself. It also became a vehicle for creative reflection, for poetry, for writing stories, for noticing moments and transforming them into explorations. Wyzard Ways became a place for reflection, for noticing, for creating. I am writing some short-short stories such as Karla's World.  Having the space to explore, revise, create, reflect has transform the journaling process for me. And although I am prone to continue to write journals and books in the old fashioned way of paper, pen or pencil, it is great to have a dynamic medium that can talk back to you.

Using the Internet as an archive, some ideas may get preserved, if you are lucky enough to survive updating and obsolescence. You constantly have to recheck your old pages, and often you are too late.  Web Arts Collectives contain some gems, like the Brazilian Capoeira Viola Enluarada (only Brazil could turn a love song into a national anthem), or the sequence of Gene Kelly and Singing in the Rain, with Usher's recreation of Kelly's scene from the movie, and then my stab in technology to place them side by side as I looked at the intimacy of rain and digital collaboration.

The following links are referred to in this entry:

The Creative Process
An example of an open ended structure for a class. An early attempt, but I see possibilities for a platform creative collaboration.

Karla's World
I found that I could experiment with a form for writing called the short-short story. I tried developing them exploring New Yorkers in the 21st Century, an update of O.Henry's Four Million, if you will.

Web Arts Collectives
A Blog for presenting multimedia as class content. This link explores Viola Enluarada,  a Brazilian song in which Love and Liberty are combined. Only in Brazil could love serve as the focus of an anthem for rebellion.

Intimacy of Rain and Digital Collaboration
I began IMPACT singing in the rain as I left orientation and headed for the pizza party in the lobby of Pless Hall.  This Blog uses media to research Gene Kelly's famous rain scene compared to Usher's recreation of that masterpiece live on the stage half a century later.