Monday, February 13, 2017

Integrated Art for Children: Get out of your box!




Dr Abe V Rotor

The Magic Box - The figure below is an imaginary box constructed with nine (9) dots. Now this is the instruction. With a pencil draw four (4) continuous lines without lifting the pencil and hit the nine dots without repeating or missing any one.

It takes several trials. And when you have finally found the secret you will realize that you really have to “get out of your box” to be able to do it. Learn to explore outside this box. Break out your shell of biases, pre-judgment. Move away from your zone of comfort or fear. Get out and seek the world outside your waterhole, outside your comfort zone. While doing this exercise the musical background is one with a happy note, such as The Lonely Goatherd or The Happy Farmer. It takes not longer than ten minutes for the whole exercise. Note: In case you already know this exercise beforehand, you will certainly be helpful to the group as facilitator. 

o         o         o 


o         o         o 


o         o         o
 

Second Part – Make a kite out of your figure, with you playing the kite at the end of the string. Use pencil and crayon.

What is the significance of this exercise?What does the kite represent?
How about a kite flying festival? Write a short essay about your work.

Imagery



Dr Abe V Rotor

They say imagination is more powerful than knowledge;
I may not be a Lindbergh, but I can soar into the sky;
Gravity and distance, emptiness of space I shall defy,
And by a leaning tree, shall reach the edge of eternity.

Sunday, February 12, 2017


Quo vadis, Homo? Where are we going, humans?

Quo vadis, Homo? Where are we going, humans? 
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog

Auguste Rodin's The Thinker
Quo vadis, Homo sapiens? Where is man gong?

A young man who was in love asked the computer, “What is love?”

Whereupon, came a prompt answer – in a number of definitions, technical and literary.

“How does it feel to be in love?” the young man continued. This time the computer did not respond. He entered his query once more, but still there was no response. After several attempts, the computer finally gave up, and printed: I cannot feel.

Spending more time with the computer deprives millions, mostly children, of participating in health promoting games and resistance-building exposure in nature. Our children are no longer children of nature; they are captives of education and media, of malls and cafes.

They like to think that the mind is like the computer, that the more information it acquires the better it is to the person.

This is not so. Not when it pertains to health, not with the ability to arrive at correct decisions, not when and where survival is needed. And not when it comes to matters of love.

And here are our children spending most of their waking hours with an “intelligent” thing in the shape of a box, a thing that has no feeling at all!

Even when the computer can tell us of all kinds of ailments in the world, it cannot comfort us. It cannot cure us. It will only worsen our allergies, our asthma.

It cannot reciprocate our friendship, our love, our compassion. Because a robot is a robot is a robot.

Diseases and many forms of human misery are masked by the Good Life. These are surreptitiously spreading around the world causing many complications, untold sufferings, and death. They turn into pandemic as they merge with other diseases – HIV-AIDS, obesity, diabetes, accidents, are becoming common cases.

The success of human beings and all living things today depends on fitness acquired through Evolution and Adaptation. Evolution refers to the “Survival of the Fittest,” through eons of time; while Adaptation is the ability of organisms to adjust to dynamic changes of the environment.

The Four Attributes of Man

• Homo sapiens “Man the Wise”
• Homo faber "Man the Maker” or “Working Man"
• Homo ludens “Playing Man” or "Sportsman"
• Homo spiritus “Praying Man” or "Reverent"

(Deus faber “God the Creator”) Should Man also play the role of God?

Homo sapiens, the Patient
(From The Men Who Play God by Dr Arturo B Rotor)

“Of all God’s creatures, there is no species more guilt-ridden, confused and self-destructive than man. Fear, remorse and frustration underlie his basic behavior probably as a result of his forbears having been driven out of the Garden of Eden…”

“Man kills not for food, he eats when he is not hungry, he mates in and out of season. His suicidal tendencies are unique. While the lemmings drown themselves as a result of reduced food supplies, man will willingly cultivate cancer of his lungs by smoking poisonous plants, convert his liver into a hobnailed atrophic mass of dead tissues with alcohol, or remove himself from the control of his mind with narcotics…

“An important feature of his personality is that the more developed the creature and the more successful, the more likely is he to suffer of neurosis.” The genes bearing these characteristics have not been identified, but seems to be transmitted paternally and maternally.

“While among all other species, infection heads mortality and morbidity lists, among Homo sapiens, neurosis is the underlying cause of ninety percent of all illnesses.”

"As a matter of fact, in the big cities and centers of population, the archetype of the successful executive in the hypertensive, the ulcer-patient, the tranquilizer-dependent. We believe that for an in-depth study of tension or anxiety, in all its typical and atypical manifestations, man is a better subject to study than any other organism.”

Saturday, February 4, 2017

A Child by a Stream*

A Child by a Stream* 

Adventure makes a child a man soon enough,
Curiosity its prime mover to make him tough.

 Dr Abe V Rotor


 
*The author’s grandson, Markus 2, in a make-believe adventure on a wall mural the author painted at their residence in QC. Unlike the mythological character Narcissus who simply admired his face mirrored on the water, Leo Carlo is curious at every detail of the scene. Here he is befriending a turtle that popped out of the depth of the stream.
   

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Integrated Art Workshop for Children


Integrated Art Workshop for Children
Dr Abe V Rotor (Organizer and Instructor)
Second Session, 3 to 5 PM Sunday (January 29, 2017) San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

 
Children gather at Dr Rotor’s residence to watch him paint, play the violin and write for the Bannawag magazine – until a workshop for them was organized. Integrated art: visual, music and literature.  Learning is applied, hands-on, on-the spot, and spontaneous.  It is something to complement learning at school, and give children  alternative to too much computer games, TV and loafing.  Creativity is talent of every one.  It’s just there waiting to be tapped, otherwise wasted.  Creativity balances logic or reasoning. It unburdens worries and cares of daily living, and brightens outlook in life.  It’s time to lead the children to a less trodden path of life – happy, loving, courageous, and free.

 (Workshop participants display their first painting with their instructor.   
Background mural (10 ft x 30 ft) by Dr Rotor.




What better activity  to offer kids on a Sunday afternoon,

but an on-the-spot painting session under the trees,

their shadow intermingling with them and their work,

urging them to just-do-it, you-can-do-it, and let-it-go ,

the creativity through the inner eye, from the inner self;

befriend “The Little Prince” when in doubt, when bored,

and discover you are not alone in this world.   




Looking for a subject to paint?  To compose a simple verse? To hum an original melody? Just close your eyes and view the world in imagery – not in cartoons, not in shopping malls, not in movies and TV shows. Train the right brain to bridge the left brain.  There’s too much use of the left brain in school, at home, on the street, or even in serious thoughts. Switch it to the right brain, the seat of creativity. The essence of rationality is the proper balance and use of the right and left brain.  


Drawing and painting may need different materials, but the principles involved are the same: primary colors (red, yellow, blue) produce secondary colors, secondary colors produce tertiary colors, ad infinitum.  And you don’t only create a full rainbow but all the colors, shades and hues of objects and views above and below it.





 

 (Group work is team work, but to each his or her own, indeed competition and cooperation in action.) Photos taken by the author, at his residence, January 29 2017