Category Archives: field study

“During winter quarter we’ll experience and articulate specific forms of consciousness and language in relation to a particular passion. One of us might want to explore Gerard Manley Hopkins’ love of bluebells and windhovers in relationship to his poetry, or create a poetic world around a passion for sport or to experience how fantasy sports are a poetic world. One of us might immerse herself in the biodynamic rhythms of chocolate sustainably farmed, or listen for the resonance between silence and sound in YoYo Ma’s performance of Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G. The methodology of our field study will aspire to that of 18 th C poet and civil engineer, Novalis for whom “knowledge and creation were united in a wondrous mutual tie.” Writing in response to our field studies will take the form of reciprocal creations such as in Melissa Kwasny’s Reading Novalis in Montana” and the poems of Wallace Stevens and Pattiann Rogers discussed in class.

Ms is for Memory through Smell

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Field Study proposal excerpt

The student will read and assess poetry pertaining to scent in regards to memory. She will engage fellow classmates in poetry writing in an atmosphere of scent throughout the quarter and create Cento (or “Scento”) poems with those works; as well as creating “Scento” poems from perfume/fragrance jingles. The student will participate in weekly seminars and create short works of poetry and/or prose in response to weekly readings. She will develop a greater sense of how smell and memory are connected in our neural networks. At the end of the quarter the student will present her work to her class in the form of two written chapters and a final presentation.

See full proposal and weekly logs

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Bachelardian Reverie

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Poetry

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Poetry Observed

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Term Paper Abstract

Read full term paper

Hh is for Hip-Hop Music

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Field Study proposal excerpt

Throughout the time with this contract Andre will be studying self expression and creativity through Hip-hop, an oral art form with roots in music and poetry. He will be studying the techniques of Hip-hop artists and implementing them into his own music and poetry, and will be creating a “My Poets” chapter based on Maureen McClane’s “My Poets: My Emily Dickinson” for both Hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur’s lyrics and poetry as well as his own. To produce this music Andre will be using self supplied recording equipment to create a collection of voice recordings and will be using Evergreen’s mixing bench to edit the sound of each recording. From this the student will learn about creativity and poetry through a series of rules and disciplines including rhythmic and tonal disciplines involving his own voice. While working on this project, Andre will continue to participate in core program activites as described by the program syllabus.

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Bachelardian Reverie

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Poetry

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Poetry Observed

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Term Paper Abstract

Read full term paper

S is for Swarm

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Field Study proposal excerpt

“S is for Swarm” is an independent project dealing with themes of swarm intelligence and computational creativity. In addition to researching the emergence of these fields, the student will begin building a series of computerized poetry machines that use altered genetic algorithms as word selection parameters. An example of this is Artificial Bee Colony algorithm.

Drawing on As Poetry Recycles Neurons’ larger themes of recycling, this project aims to repurpose the repurposed: the biological that has been recycled for the technological will once again be recycled for the poetic. What garbled message will emerge from this trail of antecedents? When the beehive’s search for honey is translated first into code and then into English, what digitalized honeycombs will be built? What residue of consciousness will the hive mind whisper?

This project seeks to complicate commonly accepted dichotomies, blurring the borders between the biological and computational, the poetic and mathematic, and considering the decentralized nature of swarm intelligence, the individual and mob. The interstices between these will serve as fertile soil, where nutrients will be recycled and poetry will grow.

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Bachelardian Reverie

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Poetry

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Term Paper Abstract

While echoing the structure of Susan Howe’s The Midnight, this paper contains two sections of lyric essays, two sections of/on poetics, and one of linguistic ellipses. In these, the author interrogates themes of generative poetry, swarm intelligence, and sense-making. Two possible frameworks for assigning meaning to objects—material and theoretical—are supplied: Philip K. Dick’s classification of “kipple” and Ian Bogost’s Latour Litanies. Within each paradigm, parts are combined to produce two vastly different wholes. Applying each framework to the craft of generative poetry, the author explores what happens poetically when these parts are entrusted with agency. This is done so through genetic algorithms and NetLogo, an agent-based modeling environment.

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A is for Alchemy

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Alchemy, or the “Art of Black Soil”, is a vast field that has spanned several millenia and influenced some of the greatest scientists and thinkers from antiquity to modern times. The student will be undertaking a field study that seeks to understand the Alchemist’s worldview by researching its history and psychology and observing the process of solve et coagula (dissolution and re-synthesis) in his own art, music, and poetry. The alchemical process of transmuting matter from one form to another is a metaphor for the constant recycling of elements found in nature, the psyche and the neuronal recycling of the human brain. The student seeks to show that perhaps more fundamental than the exoteric concerns of alchemy are its esoteric ones, for in order to shape the world around us, we must first distill the elements of our own psyche in a metaphorical suffering, death, and rebirth. Jung saw that the Alchemists where in essence projecting their psychic or inner worlds onto the alembics of their laboratories. For the Alchemists, their work was the work of the divine. They were immersed in the sacred by their work as homo faber and as creator and manipulator of tools. They took their inspiration from the natural world around them and saw the universe as an animated sentient life-form, as evident in their belief that the ores they worked with were embryos that took gestation in the matrix of the Earth or Petra Genetrix. The student hopes to show that matter and psyche are inseparable and that just as the Earth is a womb, so is the mind a matrix for the birth of all things. From Aether, to Mind, to Muscle to Machine humans have become a conduit for the creative force that animates the universe, and by working with this principle, will align themselves with the work of the Divine. The Alchemists realized long ago, as the texts attributed to the mythic Hermes Trismegestus tell us, that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, or, “that which is above is like that which is below”. The student will be using his skills in digital music and media as well as his knowledge of poetry to create an anthology of works that illustrates the composting processes that are ubiquitous in the natural world. He will be combining his knowledge and use of organic as well as synthetic mediums to show how the composting of sounds, images and language recycles the neurons of the Alchemist. Jed Rasula addresses the composting of language when he writes “poetry is language disclosed as paradox, where naming does not re-present but dissolves and then reforms creation, where the speaker too is dissolved into the act of speech and reemerges…”

 

 

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Neuro Reveries

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Poetry

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Multimedia

 

A is for Alchemy: Granular Processing

Spring Term Papers

Nigredo

As readers we are not passive consumers of finished products. Each time we read we consummate with words in a ritual act of hieros gamos. The reader is motivated to reassemble texts into new and different word-worlds. The writer is responsible for the inception of a world that has more connections and meaning seeded within it than they can be possibly aware of. Poetry is especially rich with latent meaning and infinite possibility. Upon reading, poetry breaks down into nutrient rich soil, in turn fusing both the poem and the reader. This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry explores this process by drawing on the works of a diverse array of American poets. In the book, quotation and tropic language are the composting mediums that turn the soil. The author, Jed Rasula, posits that language is biodegradable; it decomposes just like organic matter. Over time the poem starts to disintegrate and composite identities emerge from the ashes of the old. Word and language are animate; they live and die by the same rules that all life forms do. Populations of word organisms form semiotic biospheres; their overlapping meanings are sympatric cohabitations of ecological niches; their deaths alchemical transmutations. Like This Compost, this paper is both philosophical discourse and anthology of mutilation. Its focus is on the Nigredo stage of alchemy, or putrefaction, that occurs in the first stages of decomposition. It is in this stage that soma becomes fertile black earth, the word-matrix that births new life condensed into meaning.

Solve Et Coagula

Solve Et Coagula is a stitch work composition of word and image modeled after Susan Howe’s The Midnight. Here, the process of solve et coagula or dissolution and synthesis, is both method and subject. This paper is inspired by my work with digital sound design and the graphic arts as well as the mythos and history of magic. This work is intended to be a granulation and condensation of the language and symbols of alchemy as well an illustration of my creative process. I use the repetition of words and sounds (parachesis and alliteration) to induce a dissociated state within the mind of the reader. Out of this dissociation, composite identities emerge. The composting of image, word and sound is simultaneously a genesis of new life. Latent meaning is interlaced with the sounds of words and the images they evoke. The Midnight explores the thin veil between text and image, object and subject. Solve Et Coagula is a similar reflection on the space between music and noise and the matrix or margin between order and chaos. It is out of this place that new word-worlds are born. In alchemical terms, the adept fuses with their sacred texts, sewing pieces of their soul into the fabric of a universe perfuse with signs. This paper is intended to be coded and cryptic, mirroring ancient texts attributed to the likes of Hermes Trismagestus or Zozimos of Panopolis. By trying to decipher its coded language, the reader turns words like soil, populating its symbols with the germ of meaning. In The Midnight, Howe weaves her personal and familial history into a poetic memoir. Here, these characters are replaced by the mythic and archetypal figures of alchemy and magic.

 

 

LP is for Sublime: bridging the gap between lyrics and poetry

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Field Study Proposal

The student will explore what happens to the sense of self, body and mind when  experiencing the music of Sublime. She will pose the questions,  Who am I in relation to their lyrics, their style, their clothes, their sound, their overall identity, how do they personally affect me and/ or the culture around me?  How can I know?  This last question, How Can I Know?, Meditation can be described as a process of “cleaning the lens” of one’s own self perception, therefore,  the student will plan to use and study different meditation methods to try and answer these questions. The student will also be creating poetry and lyrics based off of the influence of the band Sublime, followed with a term paper modeled after Susan Howe’s The Midnight execpt the students’ will be in relation with Sublime. the student will also be producing a Craig Holdrege skunk cabbage style paper based strictly around The album by Sublime, 40oz to Freedom.

 

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Bachelardian Reverie

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Poetry

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Poetry Observed

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Term Paper Abstract

Read full term paper

G is for Glassblowing

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Field Study Proposal

This student will be studying 3 different forms of meditation using the Goethean Scientific Field Study for 1 month beginning in May and reycling her expierence through poetry, art and prose. The first will be the meditation of labor through interning with a glassblower in Seattle and will be the main focus. She will be studying what meditation comes through laborious activities through glassblowing. The second will be attending the Seattle Meditation Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays for beginners in Dhammakaya meditation taught by Thai Monks. The third will be the study of Trancendental Meditation through Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal’s Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s The Science of Being and Art of Living and many other online resources. She will also be doing yoga Mondays, Wednesdays on her own through previous classes at Edmonds Community College. She will combine this work into a Term paper.

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Bachelardian Reverie

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Poetry

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Poetry Observed

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Term Paper Abstract

Read full term paper

 

Me is for Music and The Midnight

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Field Study Proposal/Abstract

Through the immersion and exploration of my music and lyrics, as well as natural sounds, I will work to answer this question: What is sound, how does sound carry meaning, and what does my own sound (my music and lyrics) mean to me? The answer to this question will be accomplished through my immersion in the creation of my material followed by self-reflection upon the background of each song. Also to be included in this study is the reading and analysis of books on the subject sound that I have selected for individual research during Spring quarter.

The majority of students in our program this quarter will be basing their immersion, research, etc on the work of someone else. For what I am trying to accomplish, the idea of using outside methods seems counterintuitive. How can I base my methods of self-reflection around the work of others when I am my own scientist and only subject? My final term paper will be based on the organization and methodology of Susan Howe’s The Midnightin that the essay will be in the form of a journal. 

Howe’s Midnight: I can imagine it being written by her all at once, alone and lucid in the middle of the night. Surrounded by bed hangings, scraps of herself and her past and the past of the world, she stared with eyes wide open into total darkness. When the Midnight is pitch black, it is a mirror, a wreck to dive into that jostles the senses and the mind and the heart and makes us as desperate and as fiendish as dogs to grasp and clasp and smash together the fleeting fragments echoing ghosts within ourselves and to squish them into something concrete that in the end crumbles in our hands like dry bread no matter how fast we scramble or how hard we try and cry out, like dogs. Dogs in the night, how(e)ling at the darkness as if there were never a moon or stars in the sky.  In darkness, the light of the mind becomes clearer.

This paper is an exploration of sound science and current artwork that I have produced as well as a critical analysis of the artwork of my past. Where do my passion and history intersect with the music I make? How have the sounds of nature influenced my music as well as that of the culture I am a part of? I also delved into the idea of music as an evolutionary tool for self-expression and survival; a way for us to live with our Midnights without being blinded by the darkness.

To me, the Midnight that fuels Susan Howe’s work lies within us. It is an internal darkness from which light and music arise. It is the part of ourselves that we sense but cannot fully comprehend. It is fluctuating, untranslatable. The Midnight is the weight of self-awareness; the not knowing, the torment, the necessity of art, of music.

 

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Bachelardian Reverie

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Poetry

https://soundcloud.com/nat-lefkoff/strange-bird-with-colton

 

https://soundcloud.com/nat-lefkoff/everything-passing-with-louise

 

https://soundcloud.com/nat-lefkoff/drumsticks-written-with-louise

 

https://soundcloud.com/nat-lefkoff/vampire

 

https://soundcloud.com/nat-lefkoff/centipede-with-louise-decramer

 

https://soundcloud.com/nat-lefkoff/great-white-plains-1

Poetry Observed

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Term Paper

Part 1

http://blogs.evergreen.edu/ealphabet/music-and-the-midnight-part-1

 

Part 2 

http://blogs.evergreen.edu/ealphabet/music-and-the-midnight-part-2 

 

Part 3

http://blogs.evergreen.edu/ealphabet/music-and-the-midnight-part-3

 

 

F is for The Female Body

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Over the next eight weeks this student plans to understand how the female body has physically changed over the last one hundred years compared to the fluxing views it holds in American society. She hopes to look at the views of women, men, literature, art, and how she herself sees the figure of the woman’s body. This student will be reading six books of anatomy, spirituality, the history of the woman’s body, views of the woman’s body through the lens of a zoologist, as well as a book of body poetry. Throughout this field study this student will keep a journal of her findings from the books and how she herself is forming views about herself and the women in her life. She will find and partake in any woman and body inspired workshops in Olympia or Seattle to immerse herself in different communities of women.

 

Field Study proposal excerpt

(an excerpt from your in-program ILC will go here )

See full proposal and weekly logs

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Bachelardian Reverie

[catlist tags=f-bachelard date=yes excerpt=yes excerpt_size=30]

Poetry

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Poetry Observed

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Term Paper Abstract

Download (PDF, 116KB)

 

 

 

V is for Vessel

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During this Spring the student will immerse herself in the metaphor of the sacred vessel. Through interactions with texts such as The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain, Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Centering by M.C. Richards, the student will respond to these texts via words, images, pottery and poetry, expanding on forms of communication. Where does the sacred feminine meet this earth, and in what sorts of vessels is this conceived, what sort of matter? How can we communicate a deeper connection to the inner feminine by using creative forms of expression? How has the use of language moved us away from a deeper connection to our inner feminine and to our embodied selves? Through learning the skill of throwing pottery the student will use this creative form as a way to connect to her own vessel, her body and womb. She will document this unfolding in a variety of ways, expanding her skills and knowledge in herbalism, poetry, ceramics, drawing, printing, and dancing. The student will also participate in a 4 credit Herbal class, which will allow her to practice using the language and also the medicine and folklore that plants have had to offer throughout time. The goal of this contract, besides gaining skills to use in future endeavors, is to seek an answer to how we interact with vessels and to expand a deeper knowing of the importance and significance of vessels.  How can language relate these embodied experiences and concepts, and how can they not? The student is particularly interested in the boundaries of language. In other words; where does the vessel of language start to overflow? And what vessels of expression will catch the overflow?

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Poetry

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Bachelardian Reverie

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Term Paper Abstract

Read full Spring term paper here


Ab is for Anthology

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Field Study proposal 

The student will focus on finalizing the anthology of work generated by the student’s in the program As Poetry Recycles Neurons. She will also continue to explore her passion for letterpress by organizing type at Sherwood Press. She will explore her typographic and design skills as well by formatting the book through Indesign.

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

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Spring Term Paper

Introduction

Mimicking the seasons (and our observation of their rhythms) the curricular themes in As Poetry Recycles Neurons: Flocks Of Words, Tracks Of Letters, have shifted, evolved and recycled. The work in this anthology traces that movement from fall through winter quarter.The essays in Part I: Science As A Conversation were written during the fall when we spent time at The Evergreen State College’s Organic Farm. We observed ourselves being drawn to a plant through a method of science known as the Phenomenology of Knowing. This method was introduced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1832), a German poet, artist and naturalist.
We explored the slippage between art and science and the border between heart and mind while writing research papers that mixed prose and poetry. The form of our research papers followed Craig Holdrege’s Doing Goethean Science and our peppering of poetry throughout mirrored that in Stephan Buhner’s The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature. The section headings in Part I are from Holdrege’s essay and serve as an umbrella for each of our individual voices. Part II: Poetry Of Passions, presents poetry from our winter quarter field studies during which we applied the Goethean method in a month long immersion in a particular passion. Our assignment was to make poetry evoke the experience of our immersion within a passion, as E.L. Doctorow said “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensations in the reader–not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

This anthology aims to render into language our individual experiences within the shared context of the program, to create for those of us who desire the intimacy of turning a page something tactile: a textured memory of a point in time, kept alive in the body of a book.

See full Anthology here

Purchase a copy of the book here