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I have always wanted to experiment with the idea that the students discover environment and their place and relation to environment.  This idea means that basically the students instead explores the possible field of ideas that pop up at any one point.

What the students would do is this:

I would have the students sit in a circle, preferably outside or in the forest, where there is a connection between them more than the class setting--they are arranged in a specific way and through this arrangement can see everyone's reactions, interactions, words, etc by just looking around and listening.

The students would then take ten minutes to basically look at the entire environment around them--all the five senses involved--and try to repicture or reassociate the entire environment they are in and surrounded by as a mural-like figure in their minds.  I want minute details; i want grand generalizations; want feelings and emotions; i want history; i want contingency;

After they have observed and made mental notes, i want them to then close their eyes and lie back and just rest.  Not think of anything in particular, and just try to picture themselves from above, what they are doing and how they are situated--this then would basically induce some sort of self-reflection by trying to be an "other".

After about ten minutes of this, we all go back in to the classroom and sit at desks facing the front.  They would then take about fifteen minutes to first :  write the details of the environment they were in, and then to write who they are within this environment, basically connecting up the experience of the environment and the experience of self-reflection.  I basically want to see if they are solipsistic or not--my own little theory that in everyone's mind we have a little inkling of solipsism.



This assignment might be feasible in the virtual environment:

I would have the students go to their terminals, and again bring up maybe a specific picture on the screen--maybe a fractal, or a self-generating design-- that causes them to pay attention.  I would then at my terminal, begin a series of self-generating, repetitive, musical sequence that is based wholly on algorithms.  The parameters would be in conjunction with the parameters of the design or picture they are viewing on the screen.

The screen would be split into three sections:

1 large one for the design/picture
1 medium sized one for them to write in
1 medium sized one where what they write is coallated and placed automatically into a text writer that writes the text for them.

This is all done simultaneously, so the computer, with its vast amount of knowledge and technical prowess, has already read everything that has ever be written and has already assimilated all technical knowledge of the life world.  As the students repeat the above exercise, they are no longer "writing" the text but are actually creating ideas, concepts, thought patterns, reflexivity, self-reflection, and response.  The students are not really "writing," but rather they are designing their own computer environment based on a collaborative effort towards a continuation of ideas.  The fact is, as Vielstimmig says, this is a hyper identity based on the dissolution of identity of the self and beginning of the virtual, electric identity of thought and ideas.  I am not so much concerned with the writing, or the text that erupts fromthe knowledge bank called the computer, but i am interested in seeing what type of environment thye can form for themselves as a group--how close they can get together with each other using ideas, concepts, and thoughts.

Maybe this will work.  But i doubt i am explaining this idea well enough here.  It might require some more thought.  (i did put this part together rather quickly).

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