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  • Izzy 21:14 on 25/01/2015 Permalink | Reply  

    Your MU/TALK Profile! 

    Medici-University-2

    MU / TALK

    Some of you may be participating mostly for the in-world RP and not necessarily interested in talking here on MU/TALK. This is fine. Others will like the ability to interact with peers and help plan programs and share resources. You can make pages and collaborate on any info you like. And you can also just casually chat here. Post a photo or video. Share a link.

    Your Profile

    It might be helpful to post a “Profile” here. It’s optional. And what it includes is up to you. You could say something about your current goals. Perhaps your background. Of course links to your website or social media.

    LMK if you have any questions or if I can help with anything here on the site, or on campus.

    Happy Learning!

     

    • Ananda Crystal 20:14 on 26/01/2015 Permalink | Reply

      yay i am here!

      • Izzy 22:17 on 26/01/2015 Permalink | Reply

        Fantastic Ananda, welcome! You already have several blogger companions on the MU campus, and there are 2 or 3 other Creative Writers who applied and were accepted. I think they may not have arrived yet due to the unfortunate gmail habit of sending my emails to spam. I’ll resend the acceptance letters from a “safe” gmail address in the next few days.

        If you’d like to post something about yourself and your work here, that’d be great! You could post some of the wonderful text from your application if you like. You could also use this place as a scratch sheet to work out your program ideas. I find that most things are better in public. That’s the power of something like MU/Talk, and also the hope in the design of the MU Campus at LEA23.

        For sure you don’t have to post anything here, or anything specific. But if you try to work out your Program, Goals, Steps, here, then I and others can help you formulate that plan and achieve those goals.

  • Izzy 18:53 on 25/01/2015 Permalink | Reply
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    Hello World! Welcome all new Students to Medici University, Spring ’15!

    I hope you have a great experience at MU and I hope this new MU/Talk page helps you work on your programs and interact with your peers!

     

    • Vanessa 19:00 on 25/01/2015 Permalink | Reply

      Very exciting Izzy, TY!

      If anyone needs help with their program, give me a shout and I’ll try to lend a hand. We will also be setting up some “Resoruces” pages soon!

  • Izzy 12:28 on 12/06/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    ## Andy Warhol’s Childhood Scrapbook You may have… 

    Andy Warhol’s Childhood Scrapbook

    You may have heard that Edie and I have started MOOC Magazine. Gary Needham from U of Nottingham Trent has written a wonderful intro article for us:
    http://mooc.mediciuniversity.co.uk/warhols-childhood-scrapbook/

     

  • Izzy 03:58 on 28/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    I Send You This Ventriloquist’s Dummy 

    Photos by Dire Penguin, Dire Penguin, classic_film, Kevin H., Kalense Kid, torbakhopper

     

  • Izzy 09:38 on 27/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    1850charla Radar Diagram 

    Pitch Sheet

    What do you think? Did I get it right?

     

    • Christa Forster 15:40 on 27/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

      At this point, I’m not sure what it is, but that looks good to me! Thank you for taking the time to diagram it.

    • Ysidora Pico 15:44 on 27/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

      Very interesting. But, aren’t I a real person? I would like to see myself represented even more than I seem to be in this diagram.

      • Isabella Medici 19:10 on 27/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

        You know Ysidora, it’s funny, as soon as I saw your name, that you had commented, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I had made “Co-creation” too big and “Story” too small. And yes, you are correct, you are real.

        Still, while your recent live performance from Houston (bravo & congratulations on that BTW!) was a lot of “Story” & “Real World,” I’m not so clear about “1850charla” here on .Re/act. As Ciara noted, it was a very unscripted, spontaneous “performance” in this virtual “place.”

        So I’m happy to redraw the Radar Diagram if you like, but I think the “performance” or “event” here on .Re/act was not so much about Your Story & Your Real World as the Houston event was. The one here was, I think, more about the group dynamic that was explored. Perhaps “explosive” is a better word than “dynamic” given that both Oscar & Meg seem to have gone into self-imposed exile in its aftermath.

  • Izzy 16:10 on 23/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Hello Ysidora and anyone else who might be… 

    Hello Ysidora, and anyone else who might be interested: after a 438 year absence, I’ve decided to relaunch my Salon! As before it will be a celebration of many art forms: Literature, Poetry, Music, Song as well as visual arts and ideas about culture.

    I enjoyed your songs at your recent Houston / EZTV performance Ysidora, and I wondered if you might like to sing for our first salon of the new millennium!?

     

    • Ysidora Pico 15:30 on 24/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

      I would be honored!

  • Izzy 03:14 on 23/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    More Thoughts about Staging 

    Ciara wrote an interesting post, “Some Thoughts About Staging,” and how .Re/act was a sort of Improv Stage.

    4 examples of Robert Pratten's "Transmedia Radar Diagrams"

    Robert Pratten’s Transmedia *Radar Diagrams*

    The first time I looked at Robert Pratten’s Transmedia Radar Diagrams I thought the words opposite each other were an axis, so a 2-axis diagram. But the axis is actually from the center to each of the words, and it’s really a 4-somewhat-independent-axis diagram. I say somewhat, because I think Story which seems like a top-down idea from a Creator (writer) and Co-Creation which seems like a bottom-up idea from Participants probably interact. I’m not sure you can have maximum story and maximum co-creation.

    Safe to say, on the 1850 stage we had maximum co-creation. For me this is the most interesting aspect of cyberspace. IDK why, but somehow using Facebook as it’s intended just isn’t that interesting to me. Yet it seems like such a fun place to play. You could argue that all content on Facebook is “fiction” or at least “manufactured” in the sense that one spends time trying to think of the best way to sound casual and spontaneous.

    Precisely as Ciara noted, the idea that different people could come and go and chime in as they wished, was compelling. danah boyd just wrote an interesting blog post: Why Snapchat is Valuable: It’s All About Attention. Perhaps .Re/act provided a nice frame for attention / activities. Any identity here could also have blog posts or tweets or flickr images etc, but this stage was a place to showcase / focus the various elements that may have been manufactured elsewhere.

    Inspired by 1850 Charla, I’ve begun trying to resurrect my own 1560 Journals

     

  • Izzy 05:42 on 20/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    I Send You This Spring Equinox 

    spring equinox photo

    spring equinox photo

    The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies

    between me and my book;
    And the South Wind, washing through the room,
    Makes the candles quiver.
    My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter,
    And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots
    Outside, in the night.

    Why are you not here to overpower me with your

    tense and urgent love?

    — Amy Lowell, Vernal Equinox

    spring equinox photo

    spring equinox photo

    Photos by: David Wilson Clarke, Mamooli, NASA Goddard Photo and Video, Joana Roja

     

  • Izzy 17:38 on 17/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    So, St. Patrick’s Day is pretty much like Irish Carnivale, then? 

    Isabella Medici dancing the hula and wearing green accents for St Patrick's day

    Like!

     

  • Izzy 16:25 on 16/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    St. Patrick’s Treadmill Pub Crawl 

    poster for St. Patrick's Day Treadmill Pub Crawl at Izzy's Gym

    St. Patrick’s Day Treadmill Pub Crawl!
    6-8pm EZT / PDT / SLT Monday 17 Mar ’14!
    9-11pm Eastern
    1-3am Tue GMT
    * Izzy’s Gym / SL

    green monochrome photoPhoto by Grufnik

     

    • Ciara 01:35 on 17/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

      Gosh, Isabella, you’ve set me thinking…I’ve neither seen nor heard from Donnie for weeks now. Do you think it is possible that he’s been in training for this event? Hmm…I wonder if Mr. Sweetman will march/crawl too. Wasn’t his brother was in the drinks trade?

      • Isabella Medici 05:40 on 17/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

        Oh yes, Donnie & Patrick. All they ever talk about is beer! And where are they today of all days!?!?

      • Ysidora Pico 20:14 on 18/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

        Donnie! I saw him last sitting on a bar, dreaming (was it?) of two spirits — Gin and Tonic?

        • Isabella Medici 20:26 on 18/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

          Are those spirits European? I have yet to encounter them. Perhaps those 2 are Yankee spirits?

  • Izzy 12:51 on 16/03/2014 Permalink | Reply  

    I Send You this Lapis Lazuli 

    What a color!

    I loved the scene in Girl with a Pearl Earring where Colin Firth (Vermeer) sends Scarlett Johansson (Griet) to buy Lapis Lazuli and adds

    My wife need not know about this

    Damn that stuff was expensive. Yves Klein worshiped it.

    Is lapis the most divine, royal, sublime color?

    Or is there something about the relentlessness of any pure color? Kids go nuts with primary colors. As “adults” we exercise refinement in elegant palettes and blends. Or grey. Have we washed the power of pure color from our souls?

    Photos by: Orbital Joe • cobalt123 • Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel • cobalt123 • Lelê Breveglieri • lisabelle3

     

  • Izzy 13:26 on 15/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    I Send You this Duchamp Dossier 

    cadmium red photoPhoto by CraftyGoat

    Ysidora! I’ve been struck by the dialog from your performance:

    Your mom throws everything away and that’s why she has no history

    She has no history because she is a woman

    As you know I’ve been thinking about the magical qualities, the bounded serendipity of Cornell Boxes. Today I was thinking about that lovely collaboration I Send You this Cadmium Red, and another famous collaboration between 2 legendary box guys: Joseph Cornell & Marcel Duchamp’s Duchamp Dossier.

    Weather it’s stolen land or a damnatio memoraie from your misogynist brother, we’re 2 dead women who’ve had some of our history erased. Would you care to start a correspondence? We might trade Spanish Land Grants, Cadmium Reds, Duchamp Dossiers, Renaissance Portraits, Lost Journals, or anything else. We could do it right here on react, or I know someone who just loves to make new sites and could set one up for us.

    What do you think?

    cadmium red photoPhoto by Niecieden

     

    • Ysidora Pico 18:07 on 15/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

      I would be pleased to start a correspondence with you, Izzy. Let’s do it. I will find something to share with you. You let me know where to send it. Besos, su comadre, Ysi.

      • Isabella Medici 22:21 on 15/03/2014 Permalink | Reply

        Where to send it? How about here to .Re/act?

        Unless you’d like a separate Box/Blog for it…

  • Izzy 07:31 on 08/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    The Lost 1560 Journals 

    Look out 1850! 1560 is here!

    1560.mediciprincess.com

    sample of renaissance calligraphy

     

  • Izzy 12:24 on 05/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    I gave a try to creating a little… 

    I gave a try to creating a little bit of a Cornell-like experience online. Here’s a simple page that just uses mouse rollovers. What I like about the rollover is it’s a tiny anthropomorphic thing. Like someone nodding their head when you converse, it’s just a bit of feedback that says, “yes, we’re talking!”

    http://giraffe.mediciprincess.com/

     

  • Izzy 21:54 on 01/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Aww The Cockroaches did a song for me… 

    Aww, The Cockroaches did a song for me! How sweet!

     

  • Izzy 17:54 on 01/03/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Fat Tuesday is Coming! 

    Fat-Tuesday-2

    Fat Tuesday is coming!

    Throw me some beads!

     

  • Izzy 18:42 on 27/02/2014 Permalink | Reply  

    Dual Citizen! 

    Isabella Medici's certificate of Ladonia citizenship

    I’m thrilled to announce my dual citizenship! In addition to my long standing as a citizen of Italia, I have now also become a citizen of Ladonia. I have great hopes of eventually becoming Ladonia’s Minister of Education.

     

  • Izzy 09:07 on 26/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Yes brothers and husbands can sometimes be the… 

    Yes, brothers and husbands can sometimes be the lowest vermin. It’s old news. But people can also be so beautiful. This 21st century is about exponential possibilities. The 16th was about a scarcity of possibilities, even for a Medici Princess. Yet for all the abundance of this time, I am troubled by 2 trends: sedentary lifestyles and academic lethargy.

    Everything is better, save for our bodies and minds sliding into disuse. Too much of both work and play is now experienced from a chair parked in front of a flat-screen. The university has become too much about the pursuit of a piece of paper, not about a rich, humanist education. And so I offer Izzy’s Gym and Medici University, new hopes in a new century for our reinvention, body and soul.

     

  • Izzy 01:48 on 21/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Fluxkit 

    Fluxkit, 1964/65. Fluxus edition, assembled by George Maciunas. Mixed media (vinyl attaché case), printed matter. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit / Photo: Walker Art Center. All you need to make Fluxus art is in this suitcase.

    Fluxkit, 1964/65. Fluxus edition, assembled by George Maciunas. Mixed media (vinyl attaché case), printed matter. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit / Photo: Walker Art Center. All you need to make Fluxus art is in this suitcase.

    What would a “Fluxus Briefcase” or Fluxkit be in cyberspace?
    What would a Cornell box be in cyberspace?

    Is all of cyberspace a Wondercabinet?

     

    • Christa Forster 18:30 on 21/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

      I’m fascinated by the fact that you are fascinated with this question! You keep asking it; and in doing so, a response is starting to form in my mind. What a wonderful phenomenon: if we ask the same question over and over, the mind continues to solve the problem (find the solution), slowly but surely.

      I’ll let you know when it’s clear! It’s still inchoate.

    • Patrick J. Sweetman 00:11 on 26/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Izzie and Christa, This is new to me not have lived through the 1960s. What defines a Fluxus Briefcase? I must go and dust off the old travelling case and fill it with stuff and things. But I feel I’d probably be a bit random at the moment.

      • Isabella Medici 21:09 on 27/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

        Yes Patrick, I think you’ve got it! A briefcase filled with stuff and things. Everything you need for a fluxus performance.

        Or to put it in Ysidora friendly terms, you might say that a Fluxus Briefcase is like a Spanish Land Grant for your mind.

  • Izzy 06:24 on 19/02/2014 Permalink | Reply  

    The Florentine (another era) 

    screencap of twitter conversation between Isabella Medici and The Florentine

    Another Era.

    Oh my!

     

  • Izzy 04:26 on 19/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    It’s so wonderful to have Patrick J Sweetman… 

    It’s so wonderful to have Patrick J. Sweetman joining us. His friends and countrymen have suffered and lost so much under these horrible famines. In reading his “rant” I’m reminded of my own bitterness over things past.

    I know Ysidora initially invited us here to think about the past and share moments of our lives and worlds. Perhaps I’ve cheated that. Yet somehow my journey here in 2014 seems to have been to let go of the past. I never dreamt that I would return and then so quickly open a Gym and then a University. It’s all so unanticipable how the river chooses to make its way across the land. In recognition of all that, today I’ve decided to change my bio blurb on most of the websites where one posts such things.

    Old Isabella Blurb

    Look pretty. Die young. It’s a shitty deal.

    Loveless marriage to a psychopath. So I had a 10 year affair with his cousin. That doesn’t make me a “whore,” it makes me a human being. And it certainly doesn’t give Mr. Psychopath the right to murder me. What was babbo thinking? Bethroved to that jerk at 10? Please! It’s the 16th century! Can we stop living like we’re still in the 13th!?

    New Izzy Blurb

    I’m passionate about healthy, cruelty free, sustainable living. I don’t support patriarchal culture, the military industrial complex, or the slaughtering of animals. I do support educational experiences and careers that don’t involve hours, requirements, or offices, but that instead are based on achievements.

     

    • ysidorapico 19:24 on 19/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

      Oh, Querida! this is such a wonderful development. I await achievements; I ache for achievement.

      Perhaps your efforts in this life can be an example to some of the more errant knaves. I have known many errant knaves in my life. But what I am now knowing is that they may be errant because they are not granted opportunity to achieve in ways that match their abilities, especially when these knaves are unmotivated by hours, requirements (patriarchal!), offices. As we both know, attaining an office is in and of itself an achievement of dubious merit.

      • Isabella Medici 20:29 on 19/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

        Thank you Ysidora! I’ve been studying entropy (haha, yes entropy! Even if I’m not from the 1850’s, Entropy is!)

        Entropy seems to say that no matter how much food you produce, that still, someone will always starve. And probably there will always be misanthropes.

        HOWEVER, I do think you’re right. How many knaves just got stuck with the wrong “job description”? If we did a lot more career planning, might we better match the tendencies of the individual with the greater good of the culture? How many evil traits might be turned to benefit in the proper context?

        • Patrick J. Sweetman 21:24 on 19/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

          Sadly that reminds me of the Crimean War and the 1854 Charge of the LIght Brigade. Career profiling for the right ‘job description’, we could have certainly done with that in the 1850s. The lack of it is what caused so many unqualified aristocrats to be placed in positions of military command sending working-class, men serving god and country, to an early death. I note one of your cultural commentators Michael Franti when speaking about the liberation/invasion (depending what side of Jerusalem you are standing on) of Iraq said ‘Those who start wars never fight them’ So once again the world stands still. Seems I won’t find it too hard to catch up on the last 130 years.

  • Izzy 10:08 on 17/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Carnival in Florence! 

    carnival in florence

    It’s Carnival in Florence!

    And you know, I can honestly say that the festivities in 2014 are not all that different than the ones I organized in 1564!

    * The Florentine / Carnival
    * Carnevale di Viareggio

    (but please don’t ask me about The Medici Wedding of 1589. I’m still a little sad that I wasn’t around to produce that)

    carnival in viareggio

     

  • Izzy 02:59 on 17/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Sugata Mitra: Self-Organized Learning 

     

  • Izzy 10:32 on 16/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    University of the People 

     

  • Izzy 20:08 on 14/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Medici University News 

    Medici University News!

    * Facebook Page
    * Facebook Group
    * LinkedIn Company (you can list us on your profile!)
    * LInkedIn Group

    Please Join / Like / Follow. Big things are in MU’s future… and we hope in YOUR future!

     

  • Izzy 02:33 on 13/02/2014 Permalink | Reply  

    Fejee Mermaid of 1842? 

    1842 advertisement for Fejee Mermaid

     

  • Izzy 19:21 on 10/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Twitter Stream #1850charla 


     

  • Izzy 23:15 on 07/02/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Medici University: Alternative MFA Programs 

    logo for Medici University

    Hello Mr. Donnie,
    Please allow me to ask you a serious question if I may. Do you plan to spend the rest of your life waking up in yet another dank, urine reeking alley with no idea how you got there? Or would you like to seize this 2nd chance at life and do something more with it?

    I have decided to open Medici University and offer Alternative MFA programs. Would you consider being a faculty member? We will support the publication of your 1st book Ventriloquism for Dummies. I believe that on the success of this volume, you could write an entire series of books under the clever heading “For Dummies.”

    Here is the university prospectus, let me know of your interest.
    mediciprincess.com/medici-university-alternative-mfa-programs/

    Regards,

    Isabella Medici

     

    • Donnie 10:27 on 08/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

      Geez, Princess, I’d be honored, I guess. Every hallowed institution of learning needs at least one odd-ball professor, eh, Princess?
      (The book’s been written, though, kid. Redit).

      • Isabella Medici 15:45 on 08/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

        Already written? Redit? Please to explain kind sir. Apparently there are certain disadvantages to taking 438 year naps!

  • Izzy 16:13 on 31/01/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    Hello Charla tans I have been thinking about… 

    Hello Charla-tans. I have been thinking about the idea of myself being in your time. Am I presenting a 1564 mind in 2014? Am I contemporary? Where if anywhere do I exist? I’ve made a few notes:
    http://mediciprincess.com/medici-feminists-medici-misogynists/

     

    • Christa Forster 17:51 on 02/02/2014 Permalink | Reply

      Charla tans! You are so money genius.

  • Izzy 20:02 on 29/01/2014 Permalink | Reply
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    NOW CASTING Hey #1850charla is coming Anybody want… 

    NOW CASTING!
    Hey, #1850charla is coming! Anybody want to play:
    • Troilo Orsini – my hot boyfriend
    • Paolo Orsini – my overweight, in debt, violent husband
    • Lenora Toledo – my friend, cousin, sister-in-law & fellow uxoricide victim

     

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