Perception

This week we have been focusing on coming into the third and final phase of our inquiry project. My final book that I am reading is called Lucid Dreaming by Stephan LaBerge, Ph.D. I have only just begun reading it, but already the book seems very interesting, informative, and dare I say innovative in its insights into the world of lucid dreaming. This is a very welcome change from my previous book, On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins, which quite frankly, was written as if it was intended to be read by a 4 year old. On a minor tangent, I was actually supposed to read The Lucid Dreamer by Malcolm Godwin, which I have heard very good things about and most definitely still plan on reading later on when I have the funds (the book is out of print and has become very expensive), but until then, I am content to wrap up my study of consciousness and perception with Steven LaBerge's analyzation the concept of lucid dreaming.

To speak more specifically, there are several things in particular I already enjoy about this book: the scientific grounding of ideas and claims in factual evidence and studies, the mature language and writing style, the external cd that comes with it (containing tracks that build upon themes in the book as well as guided techniques for lucid dreaming), and the concise nature of the author (at no point does he speak in excess or repetition, thus far at least). Anyway, I look forward to diving deeper into this book as we finish up our study on perception.

Wrapping up Tragedy and Comedy

This week as came back from break things have been really pretty mellow, the only thing we really worked on was closing up our Tragedy and Comedy project by producing our final tribute/re-enactment. Jason and I chose to do a voice-over recording of the second scene of act four, which is the scene where Feste is toying with Malvolio's head during his imprisonment. Below is our artist statement and link to our recording.

Taunt of Malvolio

Artist Statement:

We chose to re-enact scene where Feste is messing with Malvolio during his imprisonment. For two reasons, we chose to do so in the form of a voice-over. The first and foremost reason for this was that Shakespeare’s plays were written with the lines to dictate the nature of the speech, and we thought we could most clearly, and directly attempt this through a voice-over reading of the scene. The second reason was that we thought doing purely a voice-over reading of the scene would exemplify Feste’s impersonation of one Sir Topas, and his dialogue as both characters with Malvolio. We should like our audience to consider how Feste is clearing toying with Malvolio’s fragile state as he plays back and forth between the Fool and Sir Topas.