An invitation for artists and writers, creators of any medium, to participate in a group exercise.
A group exercise performed in the comments.
A symbol is provided, and participants are asked to share at least twice to generate an amplification of that symbol.
Carl Jung championed approaching unconscious symbolic material with an ‘as-if’ attitude. Jung taught that meaning may be circumscribed, but not described.
The Process
1. Participants self-select.
2. Responses are placed in the comments to this post.
3. Each participant replies with an amplification of the symbol.
4. Each participant replies with an association to another participant’s amplification.
5. Participants are encouraged to repeat steps 3 and 4 as often as they wish.
6. Participants are encouraged to reflect on the group results of the exercise to provide an impetus for future creative work.
Postscript: Consider linking back to this post with any work this exercise generates. Links from this post to any work generated will be shared below.
(For further information, as well as an example of a completed group response mind map, see the inaugural Amplification Effect)
Week #6 Amplification Effect Symbol:
A stone wall.
Join us in the comments below!
Group Response Mind Map (updated throughout the exercise):
Links to Works Generated:
The Four Sisters, by Richard Reeve
To kick things off, I’m remembering the Stove Wall Riots: a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City
The first Book Awards (Stonewall Book Award) sponsored by the American Library Association for LGBTQ books began in 1971
Also remembering the needs to clear the land, so fields could be developed for crops. What are we going to do with all these rocks???
Has no one ever taken a shovel to the dirt? In these parts, stone, after stone, after stone.
This makes me think of weathering, the process by which rock becomes soil.
A stone wall: Jackson.
Certainly! Do you remember why he got that name/moniker?
He got his nickname at the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia. During the gunfire and confusion of the battle, Confederate Gen. Barnard E. Bee said, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall.”
The battle of Antietam, which he participated in, brings to mind Clara Barton and the Red Cross which was formed as a result.
Awesome, I’ll add in the morning. (I hit publish by mistake!)
Jackson: stubborn courage
Could not be moved against the odds.
He moves in the end: “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”
Stone wall brings boundaries to mind. Our houses here have stone walls instead of hedges or fences.
Internal boundaries, field boundaries, international boundaries, forest boundaries, for protecting what the individual, or society value, by keeping things in or keeping things out.
I so appreciate your insights.
I thought of stonewalling – shutting down, becoming uncommunicative, putting up obstacles
Love it
It makes me think of Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall and the lines
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;”
Thanks for adding that.