Brooklyn Phil, Storytelling, Secrets, and I, 2

It is a funny thing that happens when one starts to consider new art mediums for communication...suddenly we see other artistic experiences through new eyes.

This afternoon, I attended a wonderful family concert in the Brooklyn Public Library (main branch). It was an outreach concert of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, part of their series in libraries called "Music off the Shelves." The concert, which also commemorated Black History Month, consisted of the reading of the children's book "Mirandy and Brother Wind," accompanied by a small string band (banjo, guitar, violin) playing Scott Joplin rags. It was a huge success in that it was enjoyed thoroughly by the entire audience.

During the concert, I was thinking about storytelling and the opportunities Internet 2 allows us for collaboration in this endeavor, as well as the possibilities for reaching remote audiences through the storytelling. It seems to me, in a sense, that this is exactly what the purpose of the upcoming Cassandra project is. There are always several different layers in even simpler stories, and the amazing thing about collaboration of this type is the potential to explore metaphors in a story through space (meaning distance) and the ways that I2 simultaneous brings us together through a celebration of our geographical distance. I hope that made sense...

Along the same lines, I was thinking about the use of projecting on plexiglass as a way to create the illusion of nearness through interaction with the projected image from both in front and behind the glass. What does this mean for our themes of secrecy and unlocking? Can we hide anything behind the glass? Do we lock ourselves into things when the path is clear? Like the tiger in that children's story who never realized that the gate was unlocked the entire time because it was closed?

At any rate, although the storytelling was accompanied by a present string band, I went looking around for I2 clips that would include anything related to storytelling in a more general sense. What I found in my brief search was interesting:

The first clip I found was the use of I2 to teach hand-drumming, which is a traditional African accompaniment to story-telling. Here is the link to the class:

http://www.bradley.edu/internet2/i2/movies/Hand_Drumming_MPEG.mpg

The implications for I2 in music teaching here are very clear, and although that's not really what this post set out to be about, I think it's worth mentioning. The teacher is able to individually help the students even from his remote location, in real time. Pretty amazing. Also, in the parts where the teacher plays with the student, I hardly noticed any problems with latency.

Also from Bradley, an article detailing their collaboration with the University of Central Florida, in a project similar to ours:

http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/eqm0524.asp

This article was interesting to me in that, as it points out, much of the I2 collaborations are music-oriented. It is interesting to see the implications for I2 in the Theatre arts being explored. Also, to quote from the article: "In the multiform environment of our project, different audiences would experience a shared event from different and exclusive frames of reference. Audiences experience different parts of the ongoing "reality" of the story depending on their location and when they see the presentation. The experience would be shared but inherently different depending on when and where it was seen. " I think this has direct implications to the themes of secrecy and storytelling...do both sites get the same story, or the same information about the story at the same time? When the music and the movement, or the spoken word are separated by distance, what is the difference that can be made between making the distance an illusion and making the distance truly a part of the performance?

It is getting late and while there is a lot more to be said on this subject, I need my beauty sleep.

PS...I just published this and it said "posted at 8:02 pm....huh? Lest you all think I'm nuts re: my last sentence, it's actually almost midnight...