Four Mile Creek Opereta

This topic submitted by John Neborak, Zoe Brickley, Kathryn-Anne Cheney, Dustin Daugherty,Jason Thompson ( neborajh@muohio.edu ) on 2/12/03. [ Rivers Team: John Neborak, Zoe Brickley, Kathryn-Anne Cheney, Dustin Daugherty,Jason Thompson-Section: Blaisdell/Wolfe]

I. Introduction
Hypothesis: Does the biodiversity and overall health of Four Mile Creek affect the human experience and cultural perception of the creek habitat.

We plan to interview human inhabitants of Four Mile Creek, with their consent, to collect personal impressions, historical relevance, and the general significance of the creekÕs role in the community. We also plan to take a survey of the creekÕs current biodiversity, by inspecting the riffles for small macro organisms and observing the range of plant and animal life. We also plan to do research on the recorded history of the creek, including any important events regarding its development by the city and any movements to protect it.
We feel that the most interesting and interdisciplinary way to incorporate this sociological, cultural, statistical, zoological and emotional information is by utilizing the arts; specifically, musical and visual. We plan on writing and producing an operetta comprised of many movements that will express the varying concepts we will acquire through research. The operetta will incorporate various musical styles.
We will also create a pamphlet of visual representations of Four Mile Creek to complement the music. This will include photographs and artistic representations of the experiences associated with the creek.
We feel this project is the essence of interdisciplinarity and draws inspiration from almost all of the course material we have utilized thus far. We have a large group and we feel that a basic cultural or scientific study of Four Mile Creek would hardly be engaging enough or worth our time. We will have to do a lot of work to make this project successful, but we feel it will be a lot more interesting and a lot more enjoyable than narrowing our focus to a specific problem.

II. Sources

Keats, Daphne M. Interviewing: A Practical Guide for Students and Professionals. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2000.

Opdyke, George Howard. Art and Nature Appreciation. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1932.

Aldershot, Hants. Environment and the Arts:Perspective on Environmental Aesthetics. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub., 2002.

Bole, Martha and Newman, Rochelle. The Golden Relationship: Art, Math, and Nature. Bradford, MA: Pythagorean Press, 1992.

Fairclough, Henry Rushton. Love of Nature Among the Greeks and Romans. New York, Green & Co., 1930.

Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Aesthetics of Nature. New York: Knopf, 1967.
Huth, Hans. Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1957.

Tuan, Yi-fu. Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture. Washington D.C.: Shearwater Books, 1993.

Tobias, Michael. A Vision of Nature: Traces of the Original World. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995.

Vistas of a Continent: Concepts of Nature in America. Heidelberg; Winter, 1979.

http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/staffdev/tpss99/processguides/interviewing.html

www.restore-earth.org/restearth.ecores.html

www.cia.gov/csi/books/19104/art5.html

www.ourplanet.com/imgversn/112/noor.html

III. Interdisciplinary Approach

Though art is the central product of our project, it is certainly not the basis for our research. The operetta and pamphlet are but creative expressions of the synthesis of cultural, social and scientific perspectives. The basis for our project is a reflection of the Rivers course itself, in that we hope to build a general representation of Four Mile Creek, including its place in society and its place in nature. We hope to address the question of environmentalism that our class has addressed all semester: are humans or nature more important. Finally, the music and visual art will express this dilemma.

IV. Specific Research Design

To incorporate all areas of interest and core areas into our project we must take a research approach that can remain interdisciplinary yet focused. To accomplish this in the area of natural science we plan to observe, identify, and record the biological presence within the habitat to determine if the habitat is in a balanced or unbalanced condition. In the area of social science we plan to contact and interview people who live near Four Mile Creek to acknowledge, appreciate, and understand their experiences and history as connected to the natural surroundings of the creek. For the humanities portion of our project we plan to synthesize the understanding that we accumulated from the gathered information into an operetta which will express our cumulative experience through artistic representation.

V. Materials and Methods

We will use many tools to record the music for our project, including musical instruments (electric guitar, keyboard, drums, triangle, etc.), recording programs like Acid Pro and Pro Tools, microphones and our beautiful voices. We will also use photography, painting, drawing and collage techniques to create the pamphlet, as well as the written word to explain our project to the prospective audience.
Foremost, we will seek human subjects living in the Four Mile Creek area to interview about their knowledge and experience of the creek. We will at the same time survey the wildlife and plant life along the creek, identifying species and taking samples of plants and insects. After the initial field work we will acquire extensive information on the creek to put our scientific and cultural research into context. We hope to understand the history of the creek by utilizing published documents and face to face testimonials. Upon accumulating and contextualizing this information we will begin the song writing process, which incorporate all afore said perspectives of Four Mile Creek. Upon writing all of the movements of our operetta, we will record them and produce a music CD. At this time we will compose the pamphlet explaining or work. We hope to present our operetta to the Rivers class and whoever else will come to the public presentation in Leonard Theater.

Next Article
Previous Article
Return to the Topic Menu