musings of a recently absent artist

michelle has been missing for days. she said she would post assignments. she hasn't responded to kimi's fabulous description of this project. she hasn't responded to brianne's great posting of various texts from days ago. michelle just disappeared.

if michelle were part of the milgram experiment, would she be ZAPPED? would she be told to ZAP someone else? what role does guilt play in learning?

what role does distance play in all this? we're all on here, online. we can all get online relatively easily. in that sense, we aren't very far apart at all. but geographic distance seems to present some obstacles.

how does that relate to the distance between the researcher and the teacher in milgram's experiments? what about the distance between the teacher and the learner (and the fact that they can't see each other)? is the guilt greater or lesser because of distance? would that guilt shift or change once a different person is in the room? is the obedience to rules affected by distance? ie, the teacher is closer to the researcher, so does what the researcher says. what if the learner was in the room with the teacher instead, and the researcher could only give instructions via intercom or headset? would that change the choices of the teacher? would the teacher be swayed by her proximity to the learner, rather than to the teacher? how will this process change once brianne and i are actually in the same room with one another? and how will kimi's involvement change/modify/be affected by the fact that she isn't in that room with us?

and one final thought: kimi, could you perform with us via headset? (this would allow us to actually play with the idea of distance) then, suddenly, we go from a two-person performance to a performance of three plus audience.

characters: researcher, teacher (customer), learner (waitress), rhinoceros
performers: kimi, brianne, michelle, audience

what do you think?