BLIND

We live in a fast culture filled with fast cars, fast food, fast business, fast learning, fast marriages, fast divorces, fastfastfast. Our culture needs constant entertainment and stimulus so much even vehicles have DVD players to keep passengers (hopefully only passengers) amused. Elliot Eisner says, "In fact our culture puts a premium on movement and on quickness...We have a tendancy in our culture to treat things rapidly...we put a premium on efficiency and in the process lose the experience that savoring makes possible." (2002, p 207). Attention is constantly being diverted from the present moment to what is coming next. We live not out of our pasts, but into our futures.

I was talking about this with my mom and she told me about an insect that travels so fast it goes blind. The tiger beetle, as I discovered with my Google-foo, hunts in starts and stops because, according to Cornell entomology professor Cole Gilbert, "they don't gather enough photons (illumination into the beetle's eyes) to form an image of their prey."
It was this story, coupled with my musings about perception and being present in the moment, Eisner's writings, the grass gazing during AEIC, and our class conversations that inspired this short film.


We are going so fast we forget to see right now. In order to regain a sense of equilibrium, we must slow down: savor instead of devour.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Perception
• Elliot
• Eisner
• Aesthetic
• Senses
• John
• Dewey
• Foundations
• in
• Aesthetics

[write2jessi]

what is this music?!!?! AMAZING!

[matildarooski1]

The first song is by Sheila Chandra: "Speaking in Tongues I & II" from _Weaving My Ancestor's Voices_ and the second is "Dawn" from _Book of Days_ by Meridith Monk.

[cookiesonsteve]

this is weird

[dabritton]

good stuff, s. ;) i really enjoyed that! xx

[knight8th]

Great video, and the music is very intriguing. Great to use to start a discussion with students.

[howlingcelt]

This is really, really, REALLY awesome. I love it! But not as much as I love YOU. Excellent work.