A Justice Site
Scribbled Notes on Jigsaw Project
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 16, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: October 16, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Shared Project:* * *
- This first version came from trying to fit the concept of deconstruction to conflicting values. I conceived of having cored values in the center, peripheral values around them, and then, switching their positons to illustrate deconstruction, and then pausing to talk about the different insights that switching affords us.
- As this is our first such project, I'd like you to explore how both visual expression and the possibility for genuine interactivity affect our feelings and our thinking.
- color and affect: Color carries with it affect. Some colors make you sad, some make you want to sing. Vary the color; vary the message.
- form: Circles feel differently from squares. Jagged points send a different message from soft curls. Vary the form; vary the message.
- size: When I conceived of this jigsaw, I knew it was life size. One of my welding teachers once looked at a sketch I had drawn, and said, "you will do it life size, won't you?" But you could conceive of a jigsaw of different size that would fit a different message.
- negative space: Imagery consists of representations of things or feelings. Some of that representation occupies the picture plane or the sculptural planes. Some of the space is empty. The empty space is "negative space," the "what's not there" that has as much to do with the message or feeling as what is there.
- Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction
- Respect and Individual Freedom: If these are the core and peripheral values we take for one jigsaw project, then our next task is to create a list of titles for jigsaw pieces that will represent Respect and another for those that will represent Individual Freedom (don't forget creativity).
- How shall we shape, color, arrange all the pieces? Painting, collage, sculptural additions, both sides done? Now we get to make all those decisions.
- How shall the Other be included interactively? May the other touch, move, rearrange, color, change in some other way?
- What handout shall be there for the Other that will guide us all into illocutionary and governance discourse on the social issue we're addressing?
- I limit colors carefully on the Internet because of bandwidth. I tried to get the core values near the center in one color family, and peripheral values outside that group of blues, grays, and violets. Was I giving heavier affect to the core or the periphery?
For me, the peripheral values are lighter, gayer. I'm being more concerned about those core values of respect. With a real life art project, you'll have lots more control over the color. You could also vary texture in the pieces.
- I balanced the relative size of the pieces. How do you think that would alter the message if we varied the sizes of the pieces. Would you give "creativity" a big piece or a little piece? Would you put it in the core values or in the peripheral values?
In the Social Science survey we use with SPSS (Statistical Package for the social sciences) there is a question about the most important thing for a chidl to learn. Two of the choices are "to think for himself" and "to obey." Imagine how you could use that data to create an interactive jigsaw for a parenting class.
- I would like to enable us to switch places within the jigsaw for core and peripheral values. But I haven't figured out a way to do that yet? Can you?
I can see how we could do a very simple jigsaw with circles:
Well, no, I can't because the pieces won't fit if I interchange them, and there are more of the peripheral than the core. Hmmmm. If we made the pieces all the same size and shape, then we could have two piles of pieces, one core, one peripheral, and we could assemble them in the cricle shape, one within the other. But, how would we use the color and/or illustrations as an integral part of the message? Could we make them different colors, different pictures on the opposite side. Turn them over. Good idea. Play with it.
Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:
- Agencies:
Sample linking:Agencies are constantly juggling with values because there is no external consensus on how to stretch the budget when special interest groups have different values.
- Criminal Justice:
Sample linking: Consider retribution and rehabilitation and restoration of harmonious balance.
- Law:
Sample linking: Unstated assumptions abound as we attempt to slip riders into bills that will quiet special interests so that no one will notice that value patterns have changed. One good example is Halliburton taking away pension benefits, not over bancruptcy, over profit, from workers in the buying and selling of smaller units within Halliburton. Which values are core: the promise to workers? or the profit to Halliburton?
- Moot Court:
Sample linking: Core and peripheral values move about all the time. That's what deconstruction tells us. Transforming dominant discourse is about keeping us all honest and aware of those jugglings as they go on in the quotidien exchange of interpersonal transactions.
- Women in Poverty:
Sample linking: If poverty is about not having enough, then it's also about shifting values to cover the needs most pressing at the time.
- Race, Gender, Class:
Sample linking: Differences in race, gender, and class necessarily suggest differences in the cultural values we share and the priorities we give them. Again, one plausible answer is transforming dominant discourse to a level of honesty and awareness about the extent to which such exchanges permeate our everyday lives.
- Religion:
Sample linking: Religion serves as a guide in life to holding to and building flexibility, sometimes in the form of forgiveness, into the everyday transactions in which we engage. Sometimes in the effort to hold the line against feared changes, even religion, however, becomes more control oriented and less narratively concerned with each of its adherents. All this means the negotiation and renegotiation of core and peripheral values.
- Love !A:
Sample linking: Love is never having to say I will never compromise on my values. For if we never compromise, we have excluded the human in exceptions.
