At some point, it all congeals – books, movies, visual arts…
and mediums as yet undiscovered.
Some of my best teachers have been excellent storytellers. I’m
presently enjoying another class through Coursera, www.coursera.org , Introduction
to Art. This is my fourth or fifth class through the on-line format and it just
keeps getting better. The course, shared by more than 50,000 students around the
globe, is one more notch in a bar that keeps getting raised higher and higher.
The content is rich, but the mode of delivery has begun to engage all the
senses: visual, sound, touch through the techniques of frottage, but why can’t
it involve the other senses? Smell? Taste?
In the Introduction to Guitar course, listening is
essential. In the Nutrition course, taste was a pleasure. And I plan to
introduce both senses into my current work-in-progress, an exploration of
fantastical art.
Traditionally, students are taught through lecture, reading,
practice, and mastery is confirmed through testing. But why can’t learning and
storytelling include all of the senses?
With the I-Pad, the “reader” becomes a participant in the
story, Khoya, http://vimeo.com/27045415 In the Apple store, Khoya is referred to as an app, but it is, at its heart, a
story designed for teens and adults – an adventure in which the reader engages
in opening doors through touching the screen, inciting action by tipping the
I-Pad to release a jar of lightening bugs, filling a shared glossary by taking
photos and adding them to a database.
Most of us are familiar with a child's attraction to computer games. But with an Xbox Kinect, the player becomes a physical
participant in the game. The only limitations at present are the quality of the available games.
Presently, the Kinect games treat the player like a participant in an obstacle
course. But why couldn’t this technology be used to inspire “players” to
exercise by moving through a museum, or exploring a castle? What are the
possibilities if this technology were partnered with a class? What if a “reader”
were able to move through the setting of the “book” in search of the hero, or
in order to explore history through a recreation of primary documents?
Now, Microsoft’s “holodeck” begins to bleed the setting into
the participants’ living room.
Part of the enjoyment of a book, of reading text, is world
building, recreating the words as images inside our heads. But slowly, we begin
to take control of the words, building a richer and richer environment, more
connections, more sensorial. And art begins to infiltrate every aspect of life…
and the way we learn… And the way we learn… is through story.
