Complexity Explorer Santa Few Institute

Summer School offers two optional workshop on Thursday, June 22, 2–4PM. Each workshop is designed to help you gain some creative energy towards the end of week 2. There is space for about 20 participants in each. If interest exceeds available spaces, participants will be selected by lottery.

Please sign up below by lunctime Wednesday, June 21.

Creative Writing with Nature

Rage, grief, hunger, desire, gratitude, awe. The emotions we feel about the living world and our place in it are as vast and unwieldy as all rivers and forests, oceans and mountains. So how do tap into these emotions to begin to to listen to the more-than-human world? How do we understand Nature as having agency, life-histories, and desires? How do we learn to see ourselves as wild nature too?
We are ourselves interspecies, carrying around bacteria and fungi and viruses. Every time we eat, it is an ecological act. We are eating entire environments embodied in our foods. We are eating the carbon cycle, the nutrient cycle, and the climate.  
By using the ideas of hunger, pleasure, imagination, and magic, we will dive into what it means to “consume” nature, to “connect” with nature, and ultimately how to expand our perceptions to witness more of nature. 

Gina Rae La Cerva is is a geographer and environmental anthropologist, and author of Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food. She holds degrees from Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Vassar College, and was a scholar in residence for the U.S. Forest Service.

On the Emergence of Music

In this workshop we will explore the idea of music as an emergent phenomenon in the complex system that is the ensemble of all the participants. The activities do not require any knowledge of music theory or practice, only curiosity and an open mind.

After a short introduction to music viewed through the prism of complexity science, we will explore means of music creation through simple activities and collective improvisations.

Please note that some minimal physical contact will be involved.

Marco Buongiorno Nardelli is a professor of physics and composition at the University of North Texas and external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Marco has performed his pieces around the world and has a miniature opera in the Currents New Media exhibit in Santa Fe this summer.