Souk.

Spices, leatherwork, tea-shops, nargilés, craftsmen working, hand-made carpets, sheep, goats, chicken, camels resting...

the stream of sensory information is positively overwhelming.

We are quite lost in cultural profusion.

A vortex of colour, sound, conversation, commerce and perfume.

There have been times when I have found myself wandering as if through an on-line souk.


Rhizosouk

It was an image which immediately came to the fore during Dave Cormier's Rhizomatic Learning Course.

There have been times when I suppose I have been responsible for turning courses into a souk.

I have not been alone in this. That is the nature of souks. There is a place, people arrive.

Hanging out

I have hung around for those reasons.

Navigating through formatted academic wasteland where orderly discussion is the order of the day,
I soon start tapping my fingers, looking out of the window, find any distraction from the monotony.

Yes you are right. You are right.

I was reflecting with Kevin Hodgson on what constitutes the specificity of digital writing.

I made a list of points which require further reflection, so what the hell, this is as good place as any to lay out a stall.

I am revelling in the mulitmodal possibilities that these media allow.

Market stalls, tea-shops and conversation

I have a play-space.

The dialogue with Kevin, went from blog, to sound, to sound remixed, to collaborative text editor, to tweet, to animated gifs, to music, to collage, to poetry, to reflection, to multimodal scrap book, to blog post and back again.

This is where the conversation takes us. 

It takes us to a souk.

I am loving the Zeega of Terry Elliot.

I am loving the investigations of Jim Groom, Alan Levine et al combining art, cultural exploration with reflection.

I love the literary, theatrical stimulation of Gardner Campbell's conferences,

I love the constant flow of Kevin Hodgson's music, comic, poetic, output.

How not to be stimulated by all of that?

There is so much to investigate here.

Serendipity and flea markets

I am seeing search in a quite different serendipitous way to enhance creativity.

From dawn to dusk

I am continuously jumping, hanging out from time zone to time zone, living simultaneously, it feels, at dawn in Kentucky, in the early morning in Florida,in the afternoon in France and in the evening in Thailand.

Open all hours

This is a souk which is not quite sure of its opening times.

Thanks to my discussions with my friends, I am far less worried about being weird.

Fellow travellers.

OK I am weird but I am not alone.  I had forgotten that feeling.

It's OK to be creative, to doodle, to scribble, to share half-finished ideas.

I  feel at home in this souk.

I shall hang around for a while.


Oasis party

There is one thing which I want to do.

There are places that I want to visit unplugged.

It is what I have done with some of my CLAVIER friends.

I'd like to get these people together sometime in an offline learning party sometime.

It will be a veritable oasis compared to some offline learning deserts I know.