Awakening with Wiki: Composing the Transpersonal Self

This course will offer students intensive practice in multimedia composition as they investigate their transpersonal self. Textual composition on a wiki will be taught as a scripting tool for composing in every combination of media in response to a phenomenologically infinite space for student response: the sacred. Students will study and remix texts from the tradition of the ineffable, that which exceeds words. Rather than an element in religious discourse or dogma, the sacred (and its frequent resistance to languaging) will be taught as a rhetorical practice in response to what Friedrich Nietzsche called the "untimely", that which bursts, exceeds or just plain ignores "ordinary" chronological or historical temporality."Be Here Now!" While no multimedia/multimodal experience is necessary, students should come to this wiki'd class ready to experiment with digital images (The Gimp), sound (audacity, cheap synthesizers, strings) video (kino,imovie) and text as they compose thrice weekly in response to the archive of discourse and images that fathom the sacred. Participating students will also have the opportunity to compose in response to their experiences in a flotation tank located at Penn State's Center for the Study of (Altered) Consciousness.

This course will be taught primarily by weekly podcast and daily wiki interaction beginning September 7, 2008. The course is free and open to everyone.

Texts:

Sacred Texts.com

A Rulebook for Argument ( Weston) - Available at Websters

"The Book of Hopi" available at Websters

ComposingTheSacredSyllabus

Projects:

Thrice weekly wiki composition - The Rule of Three: A Page of Writing Rhythm

1 short remix composition and exegesis/performance ( around five "pages")

15 page "paper" or its equivalent final project

Attendance:

Continuous and aware participation in the class is key to the sometimes variable and volatile journey to discover your transpersonal aspects. This includes live "wetware" meetups when possible, flotation and/or meditation lab of several hours per week, and the aforementioned thrice weekly wikidelic practice.