Demonstrate Something About the Process of Communication

Peeking at my scrawled notes and etchings from our first class, I am amused by some of the sound bytes I captured from Professors Thomas Beyer and John Gilbert.

"If you're stuck with it, feature it."
"Memory is no longer a problem - there's space to store it."

"Different time zones no longer necessitate latency."

And then, on the back of my paper, our first in-class collaborative assignment: Demonstrate something about the process of communication...without speaking.

I was paired with two musicians, and we quickly began discussing our task. What are some of the characteristics of communication?, we asked ourselves. Just some of our answers -

• an exchange
• can be written, spoken, physicalized
• can sometimes be inquisitive, sometimes directive

We decided, rather than scripting something, to improvise our presentation to the class, and we passed notes to each other to decide what, exactly, we would do moment to moment. My paper includes three different individuals' handwriting, and reads like a strange set of stage directions:

Me: "Stand up and salute. Then decide what to do next."

Classmate 1: "Play a scale on the piano."

Me: "How should we conclude?"

Classmate 2: "Bow?"

I'm looking forward to formally starting projects with my classmates and others.