Exploration Through Semester Projects

by: Erin Piasecki

One of the most memorable experiences of a Shimer education, is the end-of-semester project. While other undergraduate students sit in lecture halls, writing essays and filling out multiple choice tests, for one week at the end of each semester, Shimer students are expected and encouraged to explore their own interests and work independently on a project of their choosing. The project must be relatable in some aspect to the core curriculum, and it must represent forty hours worth of work, but beyond these two maxims anything goes. Shimer students can write anything from papers to poetry; they can cook, learn an instrument, or even make a piece of visual art.

Last semester saw a number of interesting, creative projects from new students-- projects that exemplify the Shimerian ideal of self motivation and enthusiasm for learning-- in an institution which values education through and for the individual. Below are some examples of semester projects from the fall semeseter.

Michael Doherty, 1st year student
Michael decided to explore his interest in film by making one, a 30 minute experimental documentary entitled Infinity. The film features a number of "slice of life" shots of current Shimer students going about their daily lives, sweeping, doing laundry, etc, edited together into a loose, narrative form. There is no extra audio or music, and each scene is shot from a single, neutral-feeling perspective.  The style, Michael declares, is a purposeful imitation of the method used by German filmmaker, Philip Gröning in his 2006 documentary, Into Great Silence, which follows the lives of the French monks of the Grande Chartreuse, a highly ascetic monastery deep in the French Alps. As a condition for Groning's coming to film at the monastery, the monks demanded that he bring only himself, no crew or excessive lighting equipment, for his six month stay.

Michael related his project to the core curriculum through Tolstoy's What Is Art? -- a staple of every Humanities 1 class. Most recall Tolstoy's insistence on the social and communicative identity of art, literally that art is a successful "infection" of feelings from the artist to his or her audience, uniting all parties in empathy. From the start Michael's artistic endeavor seemed to clash with this prerogative. "I didn't have an object or story in mind while making Infinity other than to frame normal life and present it as objectively as possible." Even without Tolstoy's clucking tongue, the impersonal touch as a stylistic decision can definitely lead one to question: "is a film just a series of shots, or does it have a greater meaning?"  

It wasn't until the completion of writing week, that Michael received an answer. The day writing week ends is often known as "Performance Day," during which students display, perform, or air their semester projects for the community as a whole to enjoy. Michael's Infinity was well received. "It was interesting to see what significance people gave to certain scenes, which ones they thought were especially good or funny. Often, I couldn't predict it. For me, it was watching other people interacting with the film differently and independently that really gave it its meaning."
 
Jesus Ravina, 4th year student
Over the years Jesus has stockpiled dozens of sticky notes with song arrangements, riff ideas and solo melodies. So he decided to focus his semester project on recording four of the songs. During the 40+++ hours devoted to his project, he taught himself to navigate recording software on a less than capable computer, how to properly place the microphone and other such banalities of the recording industry.

Jesus approached the songwriting process the same way he approaches writing papers. "In turn I learned a lot about my creative process and realized that for some reason I was not letting myself be as creative with words as I was with notes," Jesus pointed out. He recorded an instrumental introduction titled "Blves", a grimy death metal song titled "Rott" and an instrumental track in the style of black metal titans Old Man's Child titled "Progenies of Satan".

However, towards the end of the long and arduous week Jesus decided to record an idea he had been thinking of since his Natural Science I class. There is a song titled "Sadisctic Magician" by Virginia metal band Municipal Waste. "Every time I heard the chorus I noted how easy switching magician and phlogiston would be. So as an added bonus to my facilitators who might had to sit through 20 minutes of low res death meta I re-wrote the lyrics and sang about Phlogiston over a prerecorded track."

Naomi Neal, 1st year student
Naomi's project was a 5 1/2 x 6 1/2 recreation of a Sol Lewitt's "Wall Drawing," which is currently displayed on one of the walls of the Shimer floor. Sol Lewitt is a modern Conceptual artist known for his "systems based" works. Sol Lewitt's wall drawings exist primarily as theory. The artist wrote a series of arbitrary, yet precise geometrical instructions, which when followed by anyone, would produce an original, authentic Sol Lewitt line-drawing. This method of production blurs the line between art and artist, and raises questions about the identity and derivation of both concepts.

Naomi said she was inspired by an art presentation in her Humanities 1 class, which featured another Sol Lewitt work. Intrigued, Naomi decided to use her student membership to the Art Institute to study different incarnations of Sol Lewitt, "It was really worth it, being able to go to the Art Institute and see the full scale drawings up close. I hope to go again, and do a Sol Lewitt of that size in the future." She also visited he library to find his set of instructions, in order to make her own. The form consists of curved, straight, and dotted lines on a grid of 190 squares, which creates a very striking and intricate visual work.

"I found myself thinking about art differently as a result of both this project and accumulated Hum 1 discussions. I thought about how the viewers' own experiences influence their interpretation and experience of an artwork-- any artwork. Sol Lewitt's work really begs the question, 'who is the artist, here?' which is a question I would never expect to consider, and is now necessarily a big part of my experience of his work."