Final Project: Eco-Aesthetic-Mediated-Perception (What is life?)

UCONN School of Art • ART113 • Spring 2008

Final Project: Eco-Aesthetic-Mediated-Perception (What is life?)

DUE: Wednesday, April 30th

AIM: This project is an artistic meditation on the experience of beauty and its relation to other concepts we have been exploring this semester, such as the concepts of perception, consciousness, technology, civilization and the environment. The aim is to allow the student a way to try and synthesis some of the many thoughts and feelings and experiences she’s had during the course of our investigations.

REQUIREMENTS: 1. One day of silent exploration of the UCONN campus. 2. A landscape/environmental image (or series of images, video or other expressive medium. 3. A 5-page essay which includes visual studies for your landscape. Note: If you wish your final project returned to you with comments, please include a self-addressed stamped envelope with it when you turn it in.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Part I • THE FEELING OF LIFE

The first step in your project is to spend ONE DAY (approx 8-24 hrs) in SILENT EXPLORATION of the UCONN campus as a PLACE of intersection between a human environment (a built environment within which humans do things, work, study, communicate, eat, etc. and the larger natural environment. Your objective will be to use your intuitive feelings to help you measure the contrasting degrees of LIFE in different places around campus. You are looking to find two places: (1) the PLACE-THAT-FEELS-MOST-ALIVE, and (2) the PLACE-THAT-FEELS-LEAST-ALIVE. What do I mean by “alive”? I do NOT mean the place that has the most biological beings living there, or the most natural place. I mean the place that makes you feel most alive, most at home in the world there, that is relaxing, that allows you to feel connected to the place and to yourself, and that gives you a feeling of living beauty. It is imperative that you DO NOT SPEAK OR VERBALLY COMMUNICATE during your search. Language (a feature of the left-brain) suppresses the feelings (created by the right-brain) and makes it more difficult for your intuitive FEELINGS to guide your perception of living form.

Part II • THE BEAUTY OF LIVING THINGS, THE LIFE OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS

During or after your silent exploration, prepare for creating your landscape image by creating at least two visual studies: one studying the liveliness of the Place that felt most alive, and the other studying the lack of life of the Place that felt least alive. Ask yourself: how do I express/represent life or the lack of life in this Place? Then create a landscape/ environmental artwork which explores, captures, articulates, expresses the life of the lively Place you found during your silent exploration.

Part III • COMPOSTING YOUR PERCEPTION

During or after composition of your landscape, write a 5-page essay explaining and exploring your feelings of life and the lack of life. Use your experiences to address one or more of the following questions:

1. What does it mean to consciously perceive the world?
2. How does beauty reveal truth?
3. Is beauty subjective (in the eye of the beholder) or objective (revealing something deep about the world?
4. What is beautiful about something which is alive?
5. How does technology increase and or decrease the existence of life?
6. Is the Self (the awareness that you experience as your real YOU) something in the brain that is separate from
everything else, or do you share a Self with the world?
7. What can art achieve?

Important note: You do not have to answer these questions. More impressive than answering a question is showing how a question arises naturally from reflecting on your experiences.

NOTE: To better understand question 6, watch this video.