NEH Enduring Questions Course on "What is Being?"

FAIN: AQ-50283-10

Berklee College of Music, Inc. (Boston, MA 02215-3631)
Lori R. Landay (Project Director: September 2009 to April 2014)

The development of a course for seniors that examines three themes especially relevant to Berklee's performing arts mission: seeming versus being, performance on stage and in everyday life, and the power of images and illusion.

The motto of Berklee College of Music is Esse quam videri, a phrase from Cicero's essay, "On Friendship," which translates as "to be, rather than to seem." Berklee, whose mission is to educate, train, and develop students to excel in music as a career, adopted the motto because the Roman philosopher's words reflected the college's emphasis on genuine accomplishment. Berklee is proposing a new liberal arts course entitled "What is Being?" that is inspired by this motto and gives Berklee students the opportunity to focus and reflect upon the differences between seeming and being. The course, a seminar for upper semester students, uses the motto as an entry into broad questions about existence, self, and image.

Media Coverage

Why Students At Berklee College Of Music Are Asking, ‘What Is Being?’ (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Jaweed Kaleem
Publication: Huffington Post
Date: 11/12/2015
Abstract: Four years ago, cultural studies professor Lori Landay was inspired to take that idea of performing and dig deeper into it, designing an annual seminar-style course called “What is Being?” Each spring, 12 students join Landay on campus, attend arts performances in the city, and read novels and philosophy texts to try to understand what it means for humans to exist and thrive.
URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/berklee-college-of-music-what-is-being_us_56450003e4b06037734859b4

Associated Products

New media Movies on the Multiscope (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: New media Movies on the Multiscope
Writer: Lori Landay
Director: Lori Landay
Producer: Lori Landay
Abstract: The Multiscope is the most recent manifestation of my experiments with New Media spectatorship. As a sculpture-interface for viewing my New Media movies made with machinima (real-time animation captured in a 3D video game environment or virtual world), it is inspired by early motion picture viewing devices like the Mutoscope and Kinetoscope, Nam June Paik's sculptures, discourses about windows and interface in New Media scholarship, and the postphenomenological approach to technics advanced by Don Ihde that considers the embodied, hermeneutic, and alterity relations we have with artifacts like iPads, televisions, and other screens.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://lorilanday.com/NewMedia/multiscope.html
Primary URL Description: Multiscope page
Access Model: YouTube open access
Format: Web

Prizes

People's Choice Award, 2012 Summer Conference Art Show
Date: 6/13/2012
Organization: NMC (New Media Consortium)
Abstract: The Multiscope is the most recent manifestation of my experiments with New Media spectatorship. As a sculpture-interface for viewing my New Media movies made with machinima (real-time animation captured in a 3D video game environment or virtual world), it is inspired by early motion picture viewing devices like the Mutoscope and Kinetoscope, Nam June Paik's sculptures, discourses about windows and interface in New Media scholarship, and the postphenomenological approach to technics advanced by Don Ihde that considers the embodied, hermeneutic, and alterity relations we have with artifacts like iPads, televisions, and other screens.

Best of Show, NMC 2012 Summer Conference Art Show
Date: 6/13/2012
Organization: NMC (New Media Consortium)
Abstract: The Multiscope is the most recent manifestation of my experiments with New Media spectatorship. As a sculpture-interface for viewing my New Media movies made with machinima (real-time animation captured in a 3D video game environment or virtual world), it is inspired by early motion picture viewing devices like the Mutoscope and Kinetoscope, Nam June Paik's sculptures, discourses about windows and interface in New Media scholarship, and the postphenomenological approach to technics advanced by Don Ihde that considers the embodied, hermeneutic, and alterity relations we have with artifacts like iPads, televisions, and other screens.

"Myth Blocks: How LEGO Transmedia Configures & Remixes Mythic Structures in the Ninjago and Chima Themes" (Book Section)
Title: "Myth Blocks: How LEGO Transmedia Configures & Remixes Mythic Structures in the Ninjago and Chima Themes"
Author: Lori Landay
Editor: Mark J.P. Wolf
Abstract: Mythic structures and other components of mythology and folklore are used in Ninjago and Chima as if they were “myth blocks”, pieces available to be snapped into place in various recombinations. To be sure, this is similar to influential ideas about narrative structure, from Russian folklorist Vladmir Propp’s structuralist analysis of Russian folktales, to how the “monomyth” or hero’s journey Joseph Campbell used to describe a universal pattern common to every human culture expressed with particular variations has been adopted as a prescriptive formula for contemporary Hollywood screenwriting. Both realistic and fantastical fictional worlds in a range of media from literature to comic books, movies, and 3-D graphical environments in which people can play games are characterized by infrastructures filled with remixed bits and pieces from various world mythologies. What’s interesting about how LEGO has done this in its original intellectual property imaginary worlds is how mythic structures have become both a part of and a metaphor for the LEGO “System of Play”. LEGO’s use of “myth blocks” in constructing its imaginary worlds, and people’s participation and extensions within them, are aspects of cultural practices of transmedial experience that exemplify a remix culture.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/lego-studies-examining-the-building-blocks-of-a-transmedial-phenomenon/oclc/880520948&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon is the first collection to examine LEGO as both a medium into which other franchises can be adapted and a transmedial franchise of its own. Although each essay looks at a particular aspect of the LEGO phenomenon, topics such as adaptation, representation, paratexts, franchises, and interactivity intersect throughout these essays, proposing that the study of LEGO as a medium and a media empire is a rich vein barely touched upon in Media Studies.
Secondary URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=bllWBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA55&dq=lego+studies+Ninja+defeating+ancient+evil+by+tapping&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWm-CFp-LQAhVI7IMKHaHgDCkQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=lego%20studies%20Ninja%20defeating%20ancient%20evil%20by%20tapping&f=false
Secondary URL Description: Chapter on books.google.com
Access Model: chapter in a book
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon
ISBN: 978-0415722919

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