I have just completed the second week of classes here.

In a presentation I proposed that I may wish to have my thesis project, or one of my projects while here, be to create a plan for an Interactive Art Department.

The Ouroboros  represents self-reflexivity or cycles

In that I'd be creating this imagined department of Interactive while enrolled in an actual Interactive department, it can be thought of as a form of mitosis (when a cell splits into two). This would not be the same as cloning, as I'd be making alterations.  From there I spoke about adaptations and how if an artist adapts himself to the common modes, and economic opportunities is he/she being cowardly or simply behaving in a Darwinian fashion (to survive and reproduce). Is the role of an artist to be creating new forms and even inventing new economic models for being an artist?

In other words, is the artist best thought of as a mutant?

In planning a department, I'd be able to create a path for what I feel interactive art can be (right now it feels mostly like science experiments).

In society, and certainly in the world of art, there is a tension between "doing things the accepted way" vs. "risking innovation"

In Darwinian natural natural selection, such risks are undertaken mindlessly and the rewards, while they may come with an experience of pleasure, are that you pass on your DNA. Thus that behavior or trait is selected. In my case, the choice of a thesis - and what to study - seems to be my own free will and thus the risks and rewards can weigh heavily.

If it is free will, does it still make sense to ask, why is this appealing? Something, or No-thing, put the idea in my head - but where did it come from? Why did I think this would be a good idea? Why am I drawn to this idea of having my project in Interactive Art School be to design an Interactive Art School?

I ahve three theories, one I like to play about with the "snake eating it's own tail". Certainly I personally spend a great amount of time in self-reflexivity - but I hypothesize that the Universe itself is an experiment in self-reflection and cyclicality.

Of course I also have to admit that I am drawn to the outsider role - as a former Anthropology student the idea of studying a thing from both the inside and outside is appealing.  I also have spent my life wondering, "What's next?" - not just for me but for the world. In planning a program, that ideally I'd be able to create, I would be focused on the "What's next?" - and of course Interactive Media itself is all about what is recently possible. 

If I can trace the appeal, does that negate free will? If I choose not to do this project of planning an Interactive media department, wouldn't that also come from alternative rationalizations? For example, the desire to be more in the moment and not think about what comes after I graduate.

Perhaps my mind battles it out, makes a choice, and then I live that choice pretending that I was the one who chose it!

Where do thoughts come from???????