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Friday, March 17, 2006
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What the Cutting Edge Is Up To Techno-edu-crats, with their powerpointed classrooms, ipodded lectures, computer-mediated faculty-student interactions, and expensive faculty training seminars in how to use all this shit, might want to take a gander at today’s New York Times for… the Next Big Thing! Gotta keep up, after all; your competition may be on to some new thing that’s giving them an edge in the admissions game… there’s always an innovation coming down the pike… So, here’s the headline: IN THE AGE OF THE OVERAMPLIFIED, A RESURGENCE FOR THE HUMBLE LECTURE The article notes “a renewed interest in spoken-word events, lectures, debates, readings and panel discussions, in many corners of the city, from university auditoriums to the 92nd Street Y…” Huge crowds are showing up. One observer says: “There is a kind of authenticity about having a living writer or artist in front of you.” In an age of “electronic and tv and visual media,” says another, “it’s a way to feel you are actually in touch with these ideas and these figures.” A spoken-word event is also “a symbiosis between performer and audience, with the performer nourished and encouraged by sometimes invisible cues of posture and attitude from those in the crowd.” The director of public programs for the New York Public Library comments that direct engagement “trigger[s] people’s imagination…[It’s] the life of the mind. When you come into contact with a great idea, it can change your life.” Difficult to picture? Here’s how it looks in action: We see: 1.) a human being 2.) paper 3.) a lectern 4.) a light to illuminate the paper 5.) a small audience 6.) an unobtrusive microphone. Now, out in the heartland you might not be ready for what these New York sophisticates are up to. UD understands that avant-gardisms can take awhile to make their way to Moline. She only means to signal her readers outside the go-go mid-Atlantic region to get ready. |