HUM117
the arts, the senses & the imagination
Skyline
College Spring 2008 Prof. David Meckler
Assignment
– Taste – read chapter & comment on what is the most interesting point to
you.
Assignment
– Smell – see class journal entry for 31
March
Assignment
– Touch – see class journal entry for 14
April
Assignment
– Synesthesia & creative writing
Final Essay Assignment Due 2 June 2008 7 pm New
Engagement choices (choose 3 in the course of the term)
art
museums – assignment instructions
concerts
– a list – assignment
instructions
tastings – restaurant visit assignment instructions
– cooking assignment instructions
Garden
visit – Filoli
gardens or the SF Botanical
Garden – assignment instructions –
architecture
– assignment instructions
dance
performances – assignment instructions – a list of dance choices
Exploratorium
visit [instructions] New
Film
analysis [instructions] New
Literature
choices & instructions
Engagement #1 due 31 March. [REVISED
DATE]
Engagement #2 due 12 May New [REVISED
DATE due to power failure]
Engagement #3 due 2 June 7 pm
topics
Ø vision -- looking at art; a video on
the science of vision
Ø hearing -- musical elements,
environmental sounds, poetry
Ø taste -- chocolate; the film Babette's
Feast; controversies over wine tasting
a New Yorker article on
ketchup by Malcolm Gladwell
Ø smell – part of the film Perfume. Filoli
gardens in bloom?
Ø touch -- touch and metaphors of
texture
Ø proprioception and kinesthetic
aesthetics -- dance and sports; architecture (film on Frank Gehry)
Ø synesthesia -- the cross-triggering
of sense perceptions; composer examples
Ø synesthesia and imagination –
literature!
Italo Calvino, Under the Jaguar Sun
Isabel Allende, Aphrodite, A
Memoir of the Senses
Beryl Markham, West With the
Night
Raymond Chandler, Farwell, My Lovely
Links
a
November 2007 roundtable
discussion of perception & the imagination with a magician, painter,
surgeon, perfumer, chef and sound engineer.
dc Meckler
Spring 2008
