Ana writes:
>It is interesting to compare Zopeds with a dramatic performance. But it's
>more like an improvisation or even better: variations on a theme. A
>"script" is there but every performer makes a variation or many
>variations.
when i first "learned" about "scripts" i was offered the example of
entering a MacDonald's restaurant, and the generic emergence of fast-food
franchises, and the scripts that make these places functional.
i've always understood scripts to be a general staging of activity, within
which we individualize how we participate, --- nevertheless, who enters a
Burger King and asks for the carburetor specialist?
the variations on a theme don't change the role that these general scripts
play in cultural activity, ... or have i misunderstood?
>
>
>That idea, BTW is in the core of Vygotsky's psychology of art - the
>difference between the "script" (or the expected, the standard) and the
>variation produced, creates a necessary dramatic effect, a tension that
>gets resolved in the final catharsis (maybe a final "A-ha!"?).
>Ana
you know, as an artist, i have to take exception. there's no dramatic
effect in art, the tension is between the psyche and the desire to
produce/create/express, and the standards are merely the frames within
which one might move around. in science, there is an "A-ha" but i know of
no instance of this in
art - as a student of art history, that is, and knowing so many artists,
of so many different mediums, there is never an "A-ha" so much as there is
a sigh of resignation to the process. ...
in art, the tension is never resolved, but is forestalled, ceaselessly.
that's what makes art: the irreconcilable tension, the unresolved tensions
- and tensions is such a tame word, because these are more often than not
conflicts that run in several threads and knotted lines.
tensions appeal to dualisms, (push-me-pull-you images of Dr. Doolittle) -
art is characterized by much more than tension, or standards,
but by vision and obsession, desperate persistence, a relentless work of
"giving up" and letting go
in order to continue to move within the desires that inspire.
diane
"I want you to put the crayon back in my brain."
Homer Simpson
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
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