“The Bohemian Dinner,” Charles Greene Shaw
Through close looking and careful observation, how long of a list can you make about your present situation? Split into groups of 3 or 4 and find an area in the classroom where each group has 30 minutes to observe and record the presence of the group and its area. What are all the ways you can describe the group and its surroundings without asking anything of them? At what point do your observations lead to associations that you do not see. Make note of those as well.
How will you break down what you see into individual phrases? How do those phrases help both to describe the situation and help us understand more about the “seer” and the “seen”.
Your text document should take the form of a hand-written list on letter-sized paper so that it can be pushpinned up at the end of class for general class or small group review. The review should focus on how students existing in the same situation emphasized and noted different qualities (senses). How objective and subjective are the observations, and what ideas arise from any of it?
