Bull Explores IP through Film

Enthralled by the process of learning, Bull eventually distilled his thoughts into a central question:  "What is IP?" True to character, he found this inquiry too delicious to resist.  To begin to answer it, he met with the IP faculty and discussed a video that we had watched together at the beginning of the year.  Launched by the pioneers of the Independent Project, or the students at Monument Mountain High School in Great Barrington, MA, this film began to define the program according its original imagining.  Bull had expressed interest in creating a video response earlier in the year, so we revisited the issue with him now.  Might he still be interested in such an endeavor? Might such a film answer his own question?

His answer was a resounding "yes."  Since our meeting, Bull has used a GoPro (@GoPro) camera to create a draft of his own film.  Wishing to preserve the element of surprise, he has kept the work from the eyes of the IP faculty.  He has shown no one in the program, not even a fellow student, the full piece.

On May 8th, however, Bull graced the team with a brief preview of his work.  Speaking toward the product, he remarked that he was striving for something akin to "realism."  He wished to keep the film unpolished and natural so as to capture the informal feeling of the program.  True to his intent, the scenes in his video flitted between light joviality and quiet moments of revelation.  More profound still, Bull admitted that he is perceiving an answer at long last.  After designing an octopus that continues to sprawl into infinity, he stressed that he is forming a sort of endpoint in the film, in the program, or in the cycle of the two. (As a side note, this circle conjures Vladimir Nabokov's short story "The Circle."  Bull found Nabokov's work a primary influence on his own writing earlier this year).

Ultimately, after a lengthy discussion and critique with the IP team, Bull continues production on his film.  What will it look like once he has finished it?

Description of image:  A student using a GoPro camera.  Photo located at thelantern.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the picture above.

IP Meets the Board of Trustees

On Friday, April 17th, the IP community celebrated an unprecedented event.  Four students - Tim, Trey, Khaled, and Bull - organized a presentation for Kildonan's Board of Trustees.  Led by Tim, this panel sought to share their projects and request funding for the program.  Their primary reason for the presentation, however, was to educate.  They wished to discuss schooling more generally and to tout the powerful self-directed learning that occurs within IP.

The presentation was a hit for both students and trustees alike.  Equipped with talking points as well as images of students at-work, the IPians spoke eloquently about IP.  They each shared their stories in the program and disclosed the particular benefits that they continue to reap from the IP community.  The Board, in turn, provided inquiries that launched an engaging Q&​A session.  During this time, the students were able to speak more specifically to the logistics of the program, sharpen their pedagogical comments, and meditate on IP's structure for the 2015-2016 academic year.  Once the meeting broke up, too, the board members convened with individual students to engage in one-on-one discussions that proved enthusiastic and supportive.

Thank you, fellow IPians, for supporting these four students as they designed and executed this presentation.  Thank you, Tim, Trey, Khaled, and Bull, for representing your community members and for facilitating a thought-provoking, professional discussion.  Thank you, Mr. Pendergast, for scheduling IP into the Board's agenda.  Last but not least, thank you, Trustees, for proving a receptive audience and for supporting the program as it looks to the future.

Have something to share? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of images:  IP student panel, top right.  Board members listening to presentation, bottom left.  Photos taken by IP faculty.

Bull's "Cacophony"

Inspired by his tentacle piece, Bull decided not too long ago that he was ready for another project.  It would need to extend his whimsical streak, certainly, but it would also have to prove more rigorous in prompt.

Ms. Charlap hit upon a suitable option in no time.  Having advised Kildonan alumnus August Hunt through a successful application to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (@cooperunion), she proposed a simulation of the Cooper Union home test.  This evaluation is an integral part of the application to Cooper Union's School of Art.  As described on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of Cooper Union's website, the home test "consists of a number of visual projects to be completed in approximately 3-4 weeks and returned to The Cooper Union for review."  Interested students choose from a number of prompts, respond to one directive through a multimedia project, and submit their work for consideration.

Ms. Charlap offered this undertaking to Bull, who - after examining several prompts - chose to represent the word "cacophony."  To flesh out his project, he worked with a limited number of resources under a strict deadline.  At week's end, he submitted a quirky yet heady project.  Sound waves, graphed and visually represented, played across the various surfaces of a box.  Random resources - cardboard feet and plastic tubing, for instance - were re-appropriated for anthropomorphic effect.  Overall, the piece was an eclectic, humorous, and interdisciplinary hodgepodge of math and art.

To share your thoughts on Bull's piece, please post in the comments section below.

Descriptions of four images:  A front view of "cacophony," pictured top right.  Top left shows the project's top view (note the sound wave graphed with pins).  Bottom right reveals the Newton-Laplace Equation, a calculation used by Bull to graph the speed of sound.  Finally, bottom left pictures a rear view (note the tubed tail).

Bull: The Abyss of Knowledge

Bull: "Born Gay? Is it a Choice?"

An interdisciplinary researcher and thinker, Bull continues to expand the breadth and depth of his "abyss of knowledge."  Most recently, his studies have taken him in a number of exciting directions.  He continues to work his way through Vladimir Nabokov's Stories, for example, a comprehensive collection of the Russian-American author's short stories.  He is also exploring historical and cultural considerations of the notion that women are inferior to men (#genderpolitics).  Why does this view persist, he asks, and on what grounds do its proponents propagate it?

Bull is examining this larger question by consulting Aristophanes' Lysistrata and myths such as "Pandora's Box" and "Adam and Eve."  However, he is also considering this inquiry alongside contemporary considerations of sexuality and the emergence of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (#LGBT) community.  As he conceives it, sexual identity and #gender consist of three fundamental components:  (1) one's physical make-up (i.e., the biological reality of a male or female sex organ), (2) one's introspective view (i.e., one's view of oneself), and (3) the social view (i.e., the views and gender expectations projected onto a person by those outside of oneself).  Do sexuality and gender roles exist along this spectrum, he wonders? If so, what are the implications upon gendered power?

If you would like to weigh in, please post in the comments below.  For a fascinating and brief examination into the biological and genetic factors that influence sexual orientation, please consult the following video:

"Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Bull's passage reminds me of a piece that Matthew Philipose introduced in the beginning of the year:  "Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I met a traveller from an antique land, 

Who said—'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, 

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; 

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Go, IPians.  Go.  Continue to strive as scholars and - in the process - surpass revered authorities and incarnations of Ozymandias.

For Shelley's poem, please follow the next link:  http:/​/​www.poetryfoundation.org/​learning/​poem/​175903.  Or, to hear Tom O'Bedlam's reading of the poem, please consult the video below:

(An illustration of Ozymandias.  Picture located at "Invisible Children" blogspot.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above image.)

Bull: The Difference Between Scholars and Bookworms

Continuing his dive into the ever-yawning "abyss of knowledge," Bull S. is currently exploring the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).  American essayist, lecturer, and poet, Emerson led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and - true to the form of IP - advocated for individualism not only as an educational approach but also as an existential philosophy.

Emerson continues to be studied in high school and college due, in part, to his piece "The American Scholar."  Delivered on August 31, 1847 to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, Massachusetts, this speech saw him advocate for an observably independent American cultural identity.

One passage in particular stands out to Bull:

"'Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.' 

'Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, — the act of thought, — is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

'Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.'"

For Emerson's full speech, please click on the following link:  http:/​/​www.emersoncentral.com/​amscholar.htm.

(A portrait of Emerson.  Picture located at en.wikipedia.org.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above image.)

Bull: Growth of the Octopus

At the beginning of the school year, one of the IP faculty, Matthew Philipose, brilliantly conceptualized any single project within IP as an octopus.  He emphasized that each student needs to look at her larger topic as the "head" and follow her research along individual "tentacles":  metaphors pointing toward the Literature, Science, and History components as well as other areas of interest.  

The octopus has since become an important guiding concept for this year's program.

Though the faculty have been designing octopuses to track each student's work, one pupil - Bull - has decided to create his own in order to reflect upon his project.  Below are the ongoing results of his work; this post will be regularly updated to reflect Bull's latest contributions.

Update # 2:  A close-up of Bull's work (10/​7/​14).

Update # 2:  A close-up of Bull's work (10/​7/​14).

 

Update # 3:  Bull's work, later in the day (10/​7/​14).

Update # 4:  Bull's expanding octopus (10/​20/​14).

Expanding Thought

Ned's, Misha's, and my own Independent Project (IP) endeavors have led us to a deeper understanding of mechanics, real estate, and Earth (respectively, of course). While we all came into the IP course with a clear view of what we wanted to study, we all quickly learned that our interests had roots in places we never thought of before. This posed many possible paths for our projects to take.  While this rapid expansion in thought and resources was indeed fascinating, it was equally perplexing. This confusion has obscured our once clearly defined paths and has simultaneously brought us to a new level of understanding.

~ Bull, senior at The Kildonan School