Welcome to Lost HEMA Theory!

Lost enthusiast Greg Tramel (pictured here with his very own version of Vincent!) recently sent me a link to a SciFiWire article disclosing that Lost producers/ writers improvised aspects of the show.  This 'reveal' is not at all surprising, given the inherent nature of the creative process involved in a long-arc, multi-year television series.  Reading through the article, you will see that they did know where they were going with the series, all along, including how it would end.  That said, it is not surprising to learn that some improvising did occur within the broader confines of that predetermined narrative macrostructure. ¹

 

 
I like UnRiel's response to the article at the link provided in Endnote 1....  I would not have minded if they'd ended the show with multiple possibilities hanging in the balance, an ambiguity fostering and fueling Viral Learning among the global community of Lost Learners for many years to come.  But people are different, and while some of us thrive on exploring the rich possibilities inherent in complex and ambiguous narratives, others needed and wanted some answers. 
 
Given the broad spectrum of expectations among the global community of Lost Learners and aficionados-- ranging from those who wanted answers to all the key questions to those who would be happy with little or no answers provided, and everyone else in-between-- some tough choices had to be made by the Lost Creative Combine (LCC).  As indicated my prior postings, I was hoping they would not give us a definitive answer to the question:  What is the Island....?   

Not surprisingly, I was very pleased that the answers they did give to us in the series finale, focused more on the Religion and Relationship sides of Lost.  Those of us who were equally (or more) interested in the island mythology, DHARMA, science, science fiction, etc. were really given a valuable gift by the LCC, as they left us with vast tracts of unexplored and ambiguous narrative space, open and ripe for the picking.  With time, more and more people will come to see the unanswered questions in these and other areas as a truly heuristic gift, catalyzing debate and discussion for years to come, ala The Prisoner.... 

 

In addition to providing us with a 'gift that will keep on giving' for generations to come-- open, unexplored, ambiguous narrative spaces-- another core element fueling Viral Learning in the ongoing Lost Learning Game is the vast repository of extant, excellent, and intriguing alternate Lost theories developed over the past six years and now housed in a 'virtual library' across the internet, from Doc Jensen to Joley Wood, from Eye M. Sick to Mirror Matter Moon, from Doc Arzt to Vozzek69, and many, many others....  Yes, in addition to serving an important function in documenting the creative power and potentials of the broad macrostructural narrative of Lost, as well as the fertile imaginations of Lost fans from around the globe, these theories offer a rich resource base fueling future explorations into the land of intriguing plot possibilities left open by the LCC in the vast unexplored and ambiguous narrative spaces arising in no small part from unanswered questions....  

Doc Jensen is right.... Questions and the process of questioning.... This is what is important about Lost.... This is where the heuristic insights flow most freely.... And those Lost aficionados like myself, fervently and feverishly pursuing answers to questions, more often than not come full circle, joining Doc Jensen and others, arriving at a deep appreciation of the primary importance of Questions and the Questioning process. This is one of the supreme ironies of Human Inquiry throughout the ages. For each new question answered, dozens more will arise and take its place. The answer to the question of what is the meaning of life is the process of striving to find the answer. The answer is the question.

 

What is the island?  What will happen when Aaron and the rest of the Lost Children come back into contact with the island, as teenagers or adults?  Will one of the Lost Children take over the mantle of Island Protector from Hurley?  Was the island the Garden of Eden, seeding Earth with life and sentience?  Was the island part of an initiative to seed life and sentience throughout the entire universe, connected through some vast system of wormholes?  Who has visited the island over the ages, and how have they left their mark on the island and leveraged the lessons they learned while on it?  Was the Frozen Donkey Wheel showing us a glimpse of the potential for using the island to travel across space and time not only on the Earth proper, but also the potential for using the island to engage in spacetime travel to other parts of the universe?  Is the island able to leverage some terran mini-wormhole system, to move among the Vile Vortices of the world?  And is this the source of the myth of Atlantis, as for a time the island housed a great gathering of ancients who built temples and exploited the unique energy properties to achieve seemingly magical effects?  Let the debates and speculations begin, in the Lost Learning Game.... ³

Namaste

Dr. Todd J. Hostager

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ENDNOTES:

1.  Here is the link to the SciFiWire article:

http://scifiwire.com/2010/05/dude-it-turns-out-losts-c.php

2.  Since 1987, I've been involved in the study of Jazz as a literal model for creative improvisation in groups and organizations in business and beyond.  Our studies involve a multimethod approach to teasing out key aspects of how experts enact creative improvisation in a social context.  We study both the contents and the processes involved in improvisation by videotaping fully improvised group jazz performances, i.e., sessions in which the players have not played or rehearsed with each other prior to the performance, and the performance occurs without the use of sheet music.  This approach yields a fully improvised creative soclal performance, and by carefully tracking and deconstructing the substantive (content) and processual details of who did what, and when and why, watching and rewatching the videotaped data record on a moment-to-moment basis, with one or more of the performers present, we succeeded in unpacking key aspects of improvised social creativity. 

Improvisation is neither totally structured nor entirely unstructured:  It is semi-structured, yielding sensible, grammatical, aesthetically-pleasing outcomes that build on prior songs and performances, while at the same time manifesting truly new sets of musical ideas.  On this view, the Lost Creative Combine's admission that some aspects of the show were improvised is to be expected and is a natural part of any collaborative creative effort, especially one that plays out within the confines of a prespecified narrative macrostructure, over the course of multiple years.  They knew the substantive arc of their 'performance' in creating the Lost narrative, and they knew how this 'performance' would end, but while involved in playing each song (writing each episode), inevitably they inventively tried some new narrative 'riffs' on established themes out, with some succeeding and others famously flopping (think Paulo and Nikki!)

Here are the references for our key seminal publications on group jazz improvisation as a paradigm for group and organizational innovation:

Bastien, D.T., & Hostager, T.J.  (1988).  Jazz as a process of organizational

     innovation. Special Issue: Innovative Research on Innovation and Organizations (Everett M.

     Rogers & Andrew H. Van de Ven, eds.), Communication Research, 15:

     582‑602.

Bastien, D.T., & Hostager, T.J.  (1992).  Cooperation as communicative

     accomplishment: A symbolic interaction analysis of an improvised jazz concert. 

     Communication Studies, 43: 92‑104.

     research annual (Vol. 15, pp. 203‑219).  Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

More recently, we have applied the multimethod approach for unpacking expertise to study differences in how expert entrepreneurs and novices perceive and interpret new venture idea proposals.

3.  For more information on my Viral Learning and Lost Learning Game approach, please see:

http://losthematheory.com/gpksgmsk.aspx