Notes from Session 5: October 26th

This session took the form, mostly, of a discussion of concept arising from a previous blog post that started out as an email communication. Link
I am trying a new method of keeping track of everything. Instead of sorting the notes linearly in time, like I have been doing, I'm going to sort them by theme and subject, with the most built-up ideas at the end.



METAPHORS BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC IDEAS AND SOCIETY
Ned asks: can we look at new ideas in science as new metaphors for how we see society?
- Discussion of Newton's Laws
- Can use science as a metaphor for aspects of life.
- Einstein: Matter and Energy are interchangeable
Caroline: described "interfaces" in composite materials and related it to how we use scientific ideas to help understand social concepts and vice versa. Then explored more of what was on the web, re: "events" as a social metaphor.
In social history - a black hole
e.g. would-be Hitler
Misunderstood ideas as social metaphors, trying to relate.
- Do analogies make us move faster from scientific ideas and in between metaphors because we are supposed to relate back and forth?

INSTANTANEOUS TIME TRAVEL
Adam: Goodbye Lenin film - If we were to leap into the future, we would just drop dead with shock.
[It is often said that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic.]
Events - would we recognize it if we arrived instantaneously? What about gradual change?
Caitlin: time travel
- slowly accelerate for 30 years, travel at lightspeed, then decelerate for 30 years, you have travelled through time.
Can we set up a WHAT IF? & SO WHAT? to explore space and time metaphor?
Perceptions of time and the universe:
- Progression of time, first viewed as linear, then curved, then as a sphere.
- We can't really say it, as we couldn't really understand it.

LANGUAGE
Shawn: described "events" and what would language be like if it was instantaneous or developed over time.
Link to story we did last week: How would the character be different, how would they speak if they arrived instantaneously?
Can language in the play represent the "event" which depends on the progress that this person has been through?
- Language is socially constructed (Wittgenstein: Philosopher)
Ned: Shakespeare simultaneously translates himself from different languages (like Latin and English)
e.g. pass me the Robertson screwdriver, the one with the flat head.


QUANTUM MECHANICS AND MULTIPLE PATHS
E.g. Promised One can progress into either Flawed Wise One or a Tyrant, etcetera.
How could a missing six years affect someone - Quantum Mechanics reference, two possible paths.
Effect of the play and changing of perceptions - they become a catalyst.
Back to Quantum Mechanics, on a personal level:
If you make a decision you regret, you have alternatives that no one ever sees.
Book: Richard Bach's "Bridge across Forever".
Films: Butterfly Effect, Sliding Doors
String Theory: The moment you go back, you are on a new string
[This is actually incorrect use of string theory, which refers to the actual particles of matter as strings or membranes, not movement through time, but whatever.]
Psychomachia: All of the characters in the play are the same person, different “strings”, referring to the idea of quantum mechanics as well.
- The journey is to reintegrate ourselves.
Film: Run Lola Run
What if the experience of Déjà vu is an actual event?
- If nobody sees something, there is no record of it.
Like "hegemony" - everyone knows whats going on.
Definition of Hegemony: Preponderant influence or Authority over others.


SOCIAL FABRIC

- This is woven from the paths that people take.
Infinite number of thread of people forming the fabric of society, metaphor to space-time.
Distortion causes spots or convergence. Coincidences can be the random collisions between people.
Dustin: Fourier Analysis of Waves: spikes in the randomness create significance. Spikes can also appear from apparent randomness.
If this map is wrapped around a sphere, then we can meet again, even at the same point (déjà vu)
- Each time the chain splits, a new choice is made.
Different strings or choices, one wants to converge, one wants to diverge.
- “binary split in the imagination”
Is the coincidence possibility space-time? Is social space-time distorted so other things are drawn into it?
The last domino is not fated to fall, it falls because of the others.
Weaving a web of necessities.
- Synchronicities.
Throw a rock in the web – throw and things will cross through
Solution: create a significantly massive event like the rock in the silk.
Caitlin: people coincide and randomly create children, who try to follow their own random paths.
Social Conservatism?

PERSONALITY ARCHETYPES
Are there only 500 selves in the world?
The threads of 500 people, make 6 or 7 billion.
Are the 500 people celebrities, which we always claim to be reincarnations of, rather than “normal” people.
What about “Master People”, the convergence of thousands of incarnations,
e.g. Shakespeare
Movie: Insignificance
Premise: Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, explains relativity to him

PROGRESS AND VARIATION
Grace: Genetics – the making of gametes (sperm or egg).
- crossing over occurs from Mom and Dad on the same chromosome
- creates variation.
Darwin said “survival of the fit”, not “survival of the fittest”
Evolution/Progress cannot create “perfection”, it is just adapting to the environment.
Evolve = not revolve = leave the circle

CONVERGENCE
Dustin: what about if people converge. Can two children born under separate circumstances converge to be the same person?
[In quantum mechanics, this sort of thing is called “resolving (the wave equation)”. Convergent evolution also occurs, which happens when two species from evolutionary backgrounds are put in the same environment and eventually evolve to develop similar biological properties.]
Education = Convergence of a person, creating them as a package.
- Culture is good as a vehicle
- Memes are cultural genes.
- Education means you are not starting by scratch.
Convergence: We have come together as a group
art of “the invisible made visible.”
Right ideas at the wrong time, e.g. Communism, converged too early, therefore CAN’T FORCE CONVERGENCE


THE CREATION OF "A NEW NORMAL"
The perfect time travellers are the audience. The play becomes, or can create, the new normal.
- The person who makes the mistake is the one most empowered to do something about it.
Theater as a laboratory of alternative realities.
Can we do this on a social scale [instead of just as a single person]?
Do we keep creating new realities?
Play: “In Camera” by Jean-Paul Sartre AKA “No Exit” or “Huis Clois” An event.
Can we as a community co-create a new normal.

FREE WILL AND DESTINY
Co-creating the NEW NORMAL, as a group of people.
- When did we realize we had free will?
- We have the option to completely annihilate, or completely self-create.
- An actor, as god, is able to create and invent the new truth.
- Actor gets to show society
Solipsism: maybe I’m the only thing that exists. So what?
What if the event horizon is realizing there is an event horizon?
- group choosing to come together, become consciousness.
- Do you wake up, or go to sleep?
How do perspectives change as we age? What can we choose as we become more aware?
- We are not aware of other decisions.
- When do you achieve self-awareness?

THREE INSTANCES OF A NEW NORMAL, WHICH IN WAYS ARE THE SAME THING
The following three anecdotes are different aspects of the same thing:
- Book: Mark Vonnegut – The Eden Express (autobiographical)
Mark Vonnegut found a commune on the North Pacific Coast, and settled down there. But he had to leave at one point, and deal with a speeding ticket. This screwed his life up.
The idea of a “Death Artist” – helps a person find their appropriate death.
- miser not sharing something as he is about to die
- Buddhist monks – “Don’t you feel bad on a lovely island, while the world around you is in a horrible state?”

What responsibility do the above three have to the outside world?

FLUID MECHANICS AND TURBULENCE

Fluid Mechanics: turbulent creates progress
- this is why utopia/stagnancy is bad.
- This is why disturbances are necessary

The part that sticks out on the front of an oil tanker is the avant-garde artist.
There is also an optimal speed that a motor boat progresses at, between planing on and sitting in the water, that is the ideal speed of progress, convergence

POSSIBILITIES FOR THE NEW NORMAL

- When the point of self-awareness is reached, there are three possibilites:
1) Go farther apart
2) Stay the same - this is boring theatrically - see TURBULENCE
3) Come back Together
- Using the expansion of the universe as a metaphor for the changing of the social fabric.

THEATRICAL IDEAS
- Actors could repeat patterns.
Audience are the Time Travellers
- In a room with strangers, they are all represented to you as people you already know.
- We analogize people to people that we already know.
Theater Technique (relating to the above):
- someone has an internal oppression
- you can recognize voices who are oppressing you internally, and represent them as someone on stage.
- Can gang up on oppressive voices, so that your situation is reversed, as a theatrical tool.
- Isolate a certain voice (like the fourier analysis) as different realities of your life, then attack and solve them individually. Can be compared to last week’s play.

SUMMARY: IDEAS THAT STUCK
Dustin: Quantum Mechanics explanation became a theatrical idea.
- Multiple lives, e.g. Quantum Mechanics.
- Events having distortions in people’s lives, seeking convergence
- Stage ideas: several different aspects of the same character, seeking for a big thing to cause convergence, the “big crunch”

Caroline: A event is hard to imagine (image of light next to a black hole)
Adam: We still have no firm definition of time. Should you spend time defining time? What happens if you think of destiny and is this an inner feeling?

ASSIGNMENT: Create a Play Idea
Containing:
- Context
- Characters (& Motivation)
- “Theatrical Conceit”
e.g. “we’re all really the same person”
Example: Donald Bartlemay “War Story”
Two guys in a bunker, lost contact with the outside world. Should they launch missiles? Also, they both have concealed weapons.
- How different or the same will what we create be?
- “We are all different journeys through the same understanding.”

WRITING PROCESS:
- when you are having ideas, have them – don’t judge them.
- Only judge ideas at the right time in the process, don’t judge your work as you go.

Reminder:
Caroline looking for Engineering Society Play Contributions, due October 31st. Link.

Here is something Kelsey sent in, which I saw a while back and was reminded about. This is relevant to do with the idea of time and free will, as well as connections between people, Watch It!. You will need sound.
EPIC 2015

Fourier Analysis Demo. This can probably help people better understand what I was talking about.
Turn on the sound!

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Notes from Session 4: October 19th

LAST WEEK:
- learned how to structure a play last week with “Buddy and Dave”

THIS WEEK:
- do the same thing, but related to our central themes. This will be difficult
- Looking for phrases that represent our theme, them writing scenes that contain these phrases as ideas.
- Theatre is “Life under Pressure”

What we are doing is “FRACTAL PLAYWRITING”
- looking for 5 character archetypes
- Context: getting progressively smaller and hotter
o Psychomachia – soul war, meaning all characters are aspects of one individual character, for example the author
o “The horror of being about to bubble over” is more exciting than the actual bubbling.
- There has to be some aspect of Oppression or Paranoia
- Five lines each play, coming up with Five elements each along the central theme.

5 Character archetypes that we came up with:
- Buddy - Always #2, inferiority complex, doesn’t fit in, although you can’t hurt him, he is very passive.
- Flawed Wise One – “Flawed” introduced to create an interesting dynamic
- Seeker – looking for something, like a student.
- Promised One – a little kid that people depend on
- Tyrant/”Savior”
Characters we didn’t use:
- Paranoid? Somebody highly unstable
- Manipulator of language – always speaking with undertones, e.g. “Your administrator said my calendar was like Bill Legett’s”, “We have to talk”, over-intellectualization.

The following was written:
Dustin – “Dust Village”, featuring Promised One and Flawed Wise One
Chris – “We need You”, featuring Tyrant (Mataji) and Promised One (Abdul) and making reference to a (Flawed?) Wise One (Mahatma).
Grace – “Photo”, featuring Flawed Wise One and Seeker
Adam – “In a safe”, featuring Buddy and Flawed Wise One (Holmes – Cliched Superhero)
Kelsey – “Plunder”, featuring Tyrant and Flawed Wise One
Caroline – “Do You”, __________________________
Sean – “In the Car”

With discussion, which took a long time, we put the plays in order, and found a through-character, Abdul, who starts out as a Promised One, moves to a Flawed Wise One, then a Tyrant, and then into something else. Also, there was another character I will refer to as “Buddita”, which wasn’t very well defined. I won’t editorialize this any more but I’ll just type out all the scripts in the order we put them. Do You was removed from the rest of the play, and cycled throughout later. I’ll put it at the end.

PLAY:
“We need You”
Mataji: Abdul! We have to talk to you about school!
Abdul: Leave me alone. You’re always in my face. The exams not till next week. I just needed to relax a little.
Mataji: So much has been hoped for; so much invested. What would Mahatma say? He believes in you. We all do.
Abdul: What do you mean? Not a village meeting? Believe in me or not, I can’t do more than I can do.
Mataji: We believe. We trust you. We need you…to succeed.
“Dust Village”
Buddita: Are you in health?
Abdul: What, my boy, are you doing waking me up at this hour.
Buddita: ‘Tis two in the afternoon. There is some dust rising from the pass, and people are scared. I think we need to do something.
Abdul: Ah. Your heart is the size of a whale’s. Dust from the pass eh? That could only mean one thing – something I haven’t seen since I was a boy.
Buddita: It there’s something we must do, then we have to go do it. Please get up and come with me. Everyone’s waiting.
“Safe”
Adbul: Ok…we have been in this safe for 2 hours now. There has been no response from anyone in the bank, thus we must assume that no one we knows we are locked in here. We will have to open the safe door ourselves. How much time did I say we have left to breath?
Buddita: 15 minutes. (Buddy has the look that he know Holmes has no idea how much air time was really left.)
Abdul: Good. Then let’s get started. By my observation, this steel is 4 inches thick… (observing the door, shows sign of feeling constricted, but still strong)
Buddita: (sighs) …I think every safe door should have a safety mechan – (interrupted)
Abdul: Shut up and let me think!…(long pause)…(Holmes then looks at Buddy, helpless but annoyed) Glad that you are sharing ideas (sarcastic)
“In the Car”
Buddita: (driving) I can’t find it. Listen to me, listen to me. Are you even paying attention?
Abdul: Just drive. We’ll get there when we arrive. What are you so worried about? Don’t you think I know how to read a map?
Buddita: I am the one who was been changing lanes and gears, and been cut off here. Of course you know where your going. I am just worried that we are going to run out of gas and that my nerves are finally going to crack. Can you please figure out the fastest way to get there?
Abdul: (Hums along to music) Yeah, yeah. ( hums along)
(Buddita turns up the volume, which makes Abdul hum even louder)
“Plunder”
Abdul: When are we this time?
Buddita: Isn’t it the same every time? Plunder and leave?
Abdul:…Their tactics change.
Buddita: The recipe of war…
Abdul: Mmm. The taste of victory gets sweeter every time.
Buddita: But will you always be able to taste it over the smell of defeat?
“Photo”
Abdul: Look, I am not the person you are looking for.
Mataji (mother?): (holding up a photo) But oh, yes you are! It is you in the picture. You are the one I need.
Abdul: No way. I have a lot of better things to do. (stop, thinks) Wait, I know who you’re looking for.
Mataji: (confused) I beg your pardon?
Abdul: (pointing at the photo) This man you’re looking for? He lives in a different time. You won’t find him here.

NOTES ON THE PLAY:
- we see that a Promised One can “progress” into either a Flawed Wise One or a Tyrant, or a combination.
- As for the Flawed Wise One, his wisdom can be projected onto him, and he can be either aware or unaware of how he looks to others.
- Mahatam is an interesting external character.

“Do You”
S: I don’t want to
FWO: That’s okay, I understand
S: No, really you have no clue.
FWO: Yes, I know what you mean
S: Do you?

NOTES ON “DO YOU”:
Initially this was #2 in the order of plays, but we removed it because it wasn’t coherent with the rest of the structure. We tried performing the play with people walking around, then coming together and performing one “dialogue” from the play. The “Do You” dialogue would be performed the rest of the time. Actors (who started out as Chris and Shawn) in Do You would change their tone to reflect what was going on in the rest of the scene. Note that there are an uneven number of lines, so roles will always switch in the scenes.
We then tried this where with each line a physical movement had to be made.

NOTES ON EVERYTHING:

Pressure Cookers: unknown timing of known cataclysm. (e.g. Global Warming, Malthus, Doomsday Clock, Mass Extinctions, End of Oil.

From Book: Northrop Frye “The Anatomy Of Criticism”
- defining central character’s (AKA hero’s) “ability to function” or understand within the society they are in.

Myth
Romance
Mimesis
Irony
Parody
- as society progresses, there are the types of stories that we tell. (e.g. Greek Myth to Comedy Show (such as Homer Simpson))

SO:
- Is the Abdul story a journey of a society, rather than an individual?
- “Dust Village” and “Safe”. Interesting that the relationship is nearly the same, but locations are as different as possible.
- “Where would an everyman go/do?” – Kelsey
- Myth = Idea = “Ideal” The progression is the bastardization of this ideal.
- Abdul is the oppressor as the anti-hero, whose story we are following.

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Time and Quantum Mechanics Discussion

Email from Caitlin: (The >'s are comments I put in)

Hi guys!!
Sorry I missed the workshop tonight. My volunteering ran a bit late and when
I came home for my 20 minute power nap it turned into more like a serious
crash out on my couch. So, I apologize. But, i do still have a contribution
for the week. I was talking with my friend Jeremy yesturday about our
project, and he started handing me these physics books and talking to me
about Quantum Mechanics. The jist of the theory was about time and space.
How positive particles move forward in time and space, while negative
particles move against time and space. What results is a collision of these
postive and negative particles. What happends when they collide? Perhaps the
collisions create new particles that begin to move both with and against the
progression of time and space.
> This is interesting. Do you maybe mean anti-matter when you say negative? On a sort of related note, on a very small scale space is "foamy", which means there are always particles frothing about at a small level. For some reason, pairs of anti- and normal matter particles are created and seconds later they annihilate themselves. This is actually why black holes emit radiation, because they suck in one of the particles. Anyway, it is interesting that these tiny collisions always occur, and do so simply because they CAN.
This got us talking about gravity...because this is a constant source of
power that weighs down on us. gravity's movement is one dimensional, it
flows one way - it pushes against us. I was wondering what would be the
counter act of that - the opposite energy flow of gravity. We grow. Our
bodies grow, plants grow, trees grow. We move against the pressure of
gravity to claim more space for ourselves. Likewise our lives grow as they
move through time. Gravity pushes against us as we grow. And as we grow we
push against gravity. This concept of a constant duality of energies is
interesting because if it is in everything, then there is constant movement
both forward and backwards through time and space at all times.
>There is actually a book by Eric Idle called "The Road to Mars" where a robot aspiring to win the first non-human Nobel Prize does research into comedy, and proves that universal comedy is the uplifting force against gravity. I love that book.

Does this make sense??
I'm no scientist, I'm hoping some of you guys maybe know a bit about quantum
mechanics. so anyways, I've just tried to crack down an hour and a half
of conversation which blew my mind into two mini paragraphs.
We also talked a bit about traveling at the speed of light, something maybe
I'll bring in to workshop.


One last though - sorry this e-mail is so long, I need to get out my weekly
dose of brainstorming.

Apparently, time moves slower on the moon. they've had a clock out there for
like 10 years or something and eventually it began to tick
slower...........maybe that's because the battery was running out.
ha ha
just joking. but apparently, there was some sort of a test done.
i don't know.
i'd believe time would work on a different level - either slower or faster
or whatever - on the moon, or on any planet for that matter. multiple
planets, multiple universes, multiple galaxies and multiple forms of time.
> Time does work slower on the moon for two reasons: the gravity is less there, and the moon is moving faster relative to the earth. It's all from the theory of relativity. So if I stay here and you go on a rocket flight around the solar system, when you get back your watch will be slower. This is called the twin effect. To majorly exxagerate this, my twin could leave in a high-speed rocket and come back only a year older, while I am eighty or something. This is from different rates of flow of time.

that's all for me, for now. thought some scientific thought might be
refreshing, I don't know much about quantum mechanics...actually that right
there is all i know... and i don't know how well it would/could work with
our play in the end, but i figure everything is relevant at this point.
Feel free to write back with comments or whatever, or post something up on
the website.
> quantum mechanics is odd - its all about statistics. It's hard to explain not in person, but here goes an explanation of a quantum effect, one that would be useful in quantum computing:
> Say I forgot to do my homework in the morning, and there are two problems left. I can do only one of these in my head in about 10 minutes, which is how long it takes to walk to say the JDUC from my house. Say I decide that if I walk down University Ave. I will do problem 1, and if I walk down Division I will do problem 2. If I set out on my trip, and noone sees me, or I leave no evidence as to which route I actually took, I will arrive at my destination with the solutions to both problems in my head. Of course, this is impossible with a full size human as I will bump into stuff, step on leaves, etc. but if I was a tiny particle, so tiny that I leave no evidence of my passing, then it works out. The idea behind quantum computing is that you can do this with more than 2 paths, to factor large numbers etcetera etcetera. This doesn't have so much do with time, except that work can be done concurrently if it is not sure that it is being done. Basically, if it is possible and not FALSE, then it must be TRUE.
>Blah. So that's science.

Ned says:

This is all very exciting and right on (wait for it) time. As I think I mentioned (several times) my purpose is to provide you with tools to gather and sort your ideas, insights, experiences and imaginings and turn them into effective theatre, It is NOT my intent, nor would it make any sense, for me to control content. PUSH the agenda on all fronts. Let's just keep an eye on the core mandate: Time, Education and Social Progress.

It is also important to remember that abstract concepts and scientific ideas can be integral to a piece of theatre but that ultimately theatre is a human and a social activity. Our challenge is to access, engage and use all this wonderful stuff in ways that people can see, identify with and care about.

More please
Ned

DUSTIN:
This is the start of a potentially interesting discussion that we can continue throughout the week. Instead of email though, lets try doing it on the blog. Click on "Comment" below here to add your 2 cents.

Dustin

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Notes from Session 3: October 12th

DON'T BACK DOWN!
NOTE: Anyone can comment to these posts at the bottom.

Random Throughts:
- Water is always moving.
- Art can be temporary and dissapear, like human intervention in nature.
- What about CYCLIC Time? Cause causing itself - TAU[gh]TOLOGY
- New Florida law about being about to hold your ground. Is this progress?

Before Ned got there:
- We made a "machine" and a "soundscape"
- Invented two games:
1)People walking around, bumping into each other lightly, getting into personal space. This eventually would escalate until people were actually pushing each other.
2)Everyone stand in a circle. One person slaps or otherwise assaults the person next to them. Then they turn and do something slightly more violent to the person next to them – this continues until it gets so violent people start getting knocked out of the circle, until there is only one person left to hit themselves.

Ned added to the first one several variables:
- We are all sunburnt
- There is a plague spread by touch
- Authorities with “deal with you” if you start a conflict.
- There is a social convention that if you back down from where you are going or what you are doing you “lose face”, similar to Florida Law.
- All of the above causes tension.
What emerged:
- wandered around for a bit, Caitlin got the plague from Dustin and started spreading it to other people
- Eventually everyone had the plague, except for Kelsey.
- The group cornered and tracked down Kelsey, almost like zombies.
- Healthy people became the minority, so they forced Kelsey to join the group.

Play Creation Session with Ned:
“Theory of Fives” AKA Cardinality
- Humans can organize information into chunks of five or four at most.

3 types of games: Races, Mazes and Wars
5 elements of improvisation: Location, Relationship, Conflict, Stakes [Raising of] and Resolution. (This is the sequence of events)

Springboard of a moment: Context/Situation, Character, Motivation(s).
The 3 types of games are ways of going over the 3 parts of a moment.

Repetition versus Variation.
Repetition to Variation: Imagination
Variation to Repetition: Recognition

- Is it possible to see something completely new (absolute variation)?
o Islanders see first sailing ship in Book: Ronald Wright “A short history of progress.”

Each person wrote a 5-line, 5-element skit, which we then pieced together and put in order and assigned character. I’m going to write it in the final order that we had them, but each were written independently.

Similar themes we found were:
- rain/weather
- being practical versus romantic
- family relationships
- separation or departure.

Dramatis Personae:
Dave and Buddy, twins. Buddy is two minutes younger.
Mom of Dave and Buddy
Girlfriend of Dave and Buddy

Play:
“Santa Clause” – Kelsey
Dave: Hey Buddy…What’s that noise? Come with me.
Buddy: Santa??
Dave: How old are you now?
Buddy: Same age as you…minus two minutes. Is it Christmas morning?
Dave: Whose shoes are those?
Buddy: They’re dad’s!
Dave: I thought it was time you knew.
“Late for dinner” – Caitlin
[at a dinner table. Mom and Buddy sitting]
Buddy: Mom, dad still isn’t home, can we just eat?
Mom: You will just have to wait for him.
Son: He is always late, and I am hungry.
Mom: If he is not home in 2 seconds, then we can eat.
[pause]
Son: Woo hoo! Dad can just heat up his dinner in the microwave.
“Exam” – Chris
Dave: What as exam! How did it go for you?
Buddy: What did you care? You probably did perfectly.
Dave: You always say that. Why do you always say that?
Buddy: I was second out of the ovaries. I will always be second.
Dave: You’re wrong. You’re always the first to be a jealous jerk.
“Storm” – Shawn
Girlfriend: It’s going to storm soon. The thunder is getting closer. We should go inside.
Buddy: Let’s just wait a little longer.
Girlfriend: It’s going to start lightning soon, we should get away from the water.
Buddy: Look at the colours in the sky. Look at the clouds [lightning crash]. Look at the lightning! Do you see? The rain is already falling on the other side of the lake. Soon it will..here it comes!
Girl: Agh!! It’s pouring!!! I’m soaked. Can we go now?
“I’m married” – Adam
Buddy: Hey Dave.
Dave: Hey Buddy
[Buddy feeling guilty, about to confess]
Buddy: I’ve been having an affair with your girlfriend.
[Buddy is guilty. Dave is at first perplexed, but never mad. Dave then shrugs]
Dave: It’s okay. My wife in Toronto doesn’t know I have a girlfriend.
[Buddy is mildly shocked, then upset]
Buddy: You didn’t invite me to your wedding?
“Counting Flies” – Grace
Buddy: Why are you here?
Mom: You’ve been stuck in the lab, staring at flies for 3 days. I’m bringing you home.
Buddy: I like it better here. It’s better being here than being home with you and Dad.
“Raining Sideways” – Dustin
Buddy: It looks like its raining sideways.
Dave: Why did you bring me here?
Buddy: This is where I’m going to live from now on.
Dave: I would hate this weather if it didn’t stop.
Buddy: You don’t need to visit

During the performance, there was a lot of “Awww Buddy”
This is representative of the FRACTAL STRUCTURE of a play.
Dave was in a RACE, Buddy was in a MAZE, and both were at WAR.

Chris mentioned the “Rake Progress”

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Buddy "play" and ideas from it do not have to be part of the final set of ideas going into the play, it is just a test to learn how to write a play.

NEXT WEEK:
Just remember when thoughts from the session came up during the week.

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Notes from Session 2: October 5th

THE CLIMAX IS NOW!




What did we remember from last week?
- Our first time list was mostly negative, time can be more positive.

How time shapes us:
- A convict spent time in jail for barely nothing, and came out with the mindset of a CRIMINAL.
- Business people are a slave to time.

Defined RANDOM:
- Has a definition, but also a way of saying "I don't know how to express what I'm saying, but I hope you understand me."

DREAMS:
- You can have a recurring dream, and go back and fix things as if you are travelling through time.
- This play creation is "collective dreaming".

DISCONNECTION from Time
- In a plane, you go from place to place, but are not really aware of the intervening movement, like teleportation.
- Similiar to us in this room, we are disconnected from the outside.

Time as POWER
- "Who determines how much of everyone else's time you can use?" (e.g. spam, telemarketing)
- EDUCATION controls people by putting them in a classroom all day, similiar to THEATRE, which is the ultimate control of time. You are put in a dark room for a set time.
- Putting your hand up: CONVENTION of the Education Environment saying "I don't feel I can decide when I am able to [take up your time] to talk."
- Are ideas like gravity and time GODS?

Looked for examples of when people used time to OPPRESS you (archaelogical sense of looking at the problem)
- Put in a tiny cubicle when "arrested" for shoplifting for the first time. There was only one door and had complete DISCONNECTION from what was going on outside.
- Traveller not allowed on a flight, as it was supposedly past the last time, and the desk was "closed". There was an argument and it was accidentally found that it was 5 minutes before the latest time, although they had spent several minutes arguing about the time. This shows how arbitrary time is.

IMPROVISATION based on the second story
- removed the realization of the correct time, as this was anticlimactic
- The Scene is now "TRUTH" regardless of the original meaning or intentions of the story.
Motivations for Clerk: want to go home, to stretch time passing in the argument so that it is really too late.
Motivations for Traveller: want to get on flight.
- Acted out story, with people tapping actors out when they got a good idea.
EXAMPLE: Kelsey tapped Dustin out as the Clerk, and made the reasoning more PERSONAL.

Defining PROGRESS:
- movement
- empty action to feel existence
- change is popular as an idea but not real change.

SOCIAL progress:
- wanted by whom? what is society?

Sidenote: Turning towards ACTION is a natural REACTION to our environment which is evolved. Noticing STILLNESS is non-intuitive.

MEASURING development/progress
- progress defined in terms of the past, often historically meaning "not PRIMITIVE"
- we measure only what we can measure, part of PROGRESS is the changing of its definition.
- The measure of progress is history, so it is defined by MEMORY, and is thus SUBJECTIVE.

MEMORY as what was measured
- memory can change
- for "SOCIAL memory", does more people make it more accurate?
EXPRESSION:
- We can't share ideas as humans that we share intuitively, because in their expression verbally, they become subjective. This is similiar to the word RANDOM.

Memory and Expression as a NARRATIVE:
- people remember NARRATIVES, that culture is a "myth".
- time is PROGRESSION through a historical story, e.g. Slaughterhouse-Five Aliens [Tralfamadorians] knew all of time as a pre-written story.
- A pre-defined story is a RITUAL.

If our perception of time is as a narrative story, then when is the CLIMAX? NOW!

There are different perspectives possible of the same story, so the perception of a narrative is subjective, and for everyone the CLIMAX IS NOW.

Time is cyclical, and we are always the moving climax. Although we can believe that the past and future are different, it is only our placement of the climax of our narrative as now that makes this so. (see picture at the beginning of this post)

NEXT WEEK:
- When did ideas from the time project session come up during the week?
- Ned will not be there until 19:00-19:30 next week, so for the first part of the session we will be working on something to show him.

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Notes from Session 1: September 28th

Brainstorming – TIME….
Is long, is short, moves forward, is of the essence, waits for no man, is memory, bring age, is frustrating, constraining, measurable, moves with the sun, entirely man made, is arbitrary, is not created or destroyed, slows down as you approach the speed of light, relative(ity), black hole, tick tock, music, meter, heartbeat, is a song, is not linear, is linear, is on my side, is (relatively) infinite, is finite, is running out, is a machine, is unperceivable, time is up, is standing still, is now, time for bed, what time? (Mr. Wolf), timing is everything, No-Time Toulouse, Greenwich Mean Time, Time Zone, Time for a New Page, No time like the Present, 18:60, Sundials, shadows, sleep time, tea time, growth, wrinkle in…, sometimes too fast/slow, shaving time off, Resource Depletion Graph, Space-Time, Best-Time, Appropriate Times, First times, Good/bad/ugly time.

Time Brainstorm Summary:
- dictates a lot of our behavious
- steers us
- we haven’t defined time, [in our brainstorming] we have defined us.
- It’s a Big Idea like LOVE
- Relative to Everyone’s Experiences
- When did we invent [the idea of] time?
- Time is always moving, and is therefore stagnant

What Strategies did people use to sit still for seven minutes?
- Songs/Monologues
- Some people got up when they became anxious
- Graham baked cookies recently, which took about 12 minutes, so he was aiming for “One half-baking of cookies”

One interesting definition of POWER: the ability to bring down everyone else if you fail.

Also learned about something important: 3 ways of WAITING:
- Waiting for something that you know is coming [enduring]
- Waiting for something that doesn’t exist [misconception]
- Waiting for something that you don’t know exists, but does [hopelessness]

End of Session:
- Started with time this session, will go on to other topics later
- For those who attended the first session, come back with 3 things that really stuck out from this week to next week’s session (October 5th)

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