WEEK 10. Maths, Embodied Learning & Patterning

This weeks lecture and learning lab engaged with embodied mathematics, ethno-mathematics, pattern symbolism, the physiological effects patterning has on the body through dazzle, synaesthesia and figure-ground reversal.

We were set some interesting tasks ahead of the learning lab. To start, I began experimenting with the Angolan sand drawings. My very basic understanding of them is that they function as a storytelling device where the teller inscribes a pattern into the sand whilst relaying a tale. My first attempt with the simplest of the drawings on the youtube video, shared with us by Dr Stephanie Bunn, went smoothly but there was a notable difference in the pace in which I moved through the drawing compared to the person in the video. Although I wasn't telling a story whilst I drew I did wonder whether elements of the story correlated to the points in the picture, this wasn't made clear. However if this was the case then my slow beginners pace would have probably impeded the telling of the tale.

I had my partner take a video from above, watching it back it seemed much clearer from a bird's eye view where I was supposed to be travelling to through the drawing. As you can probably tell from my staggered movements, whilst drawing with my finger it seemed less clear where I should be going as my concentration was focussed on the end of my finger and not so much on the picture as a whole. Hence the stopping and starting to survey where I am and where I am heading on the grid.

This switching of perceptions between travelling through the picture in three dimensions with the tip of my finger and then observing the image as a whole from above really resonated with my understanding of Tim Ingold's theories of journeying and threading through a landscape. It was when I took up the next task of making the knots this really become clear! Instantly, as I started to tie the knot with a piece of cord, I realised there was a correlation between the two tasks. The end of the cord as I weaved it through to create the loops, acted very much like the end of my finger tracing the curves and loops through the flour. Making the sand (flour) drawing look very much like a schematic of a loosened knot! Tying the knots further drew my attention to the link between drawing and traversing landscapes by walking, as the knots where created by a single continuous line/thread, but the twisting and looping created a topology, a 3D landscape with an inner and outer world. Similar to Ingold's theories of path making and wayfaring.

The third aspect of the task asked us to take one material and make a further ten from it. I chose paper simply because for me it was the least determined of the materials that were suggested (clay, grass etc) and in that way had the most potential for variety. I started out with one sheet of paper. My first inclination was to fold it and make origami structures. As the task asked us to make new materials I didn't continuing this. Although in one of my experiments I did try to make an origami crane from memory which failed but did produce a nice topological structure nonetheless.

Inspired by this weeks readings and the discussions on weaving as visual representation of mathematical patterns in the lecture, I decided to weave some paper. Eventually attempting to make a 3D weaved cube with limited success, realising I was spending a too much time on the task. I'm sure with more time it would have some together. I also experimented with plaiting paper finding that if I twisted each strand of the plait it give the overall structure greater integrity. It is obvious here that I was interested in creating structural forms. This is probably, as Dr Bunn guessed, related to my industrial design experience. Finding satisfaction in creating strength and durability from what could be deemed as a flimsy material. I wouldn't usually consider myself very crafty. When I make things I prefer them to be functional rather than decorative. Meaning that I don't often make or create for fun and only usually make things that serve some purpose or are useful in some way.

Learning Lab Task:

ANGOLAN SAND DRAWINGS. (Or flour drawings in my case!)

KNOTS

PAPER

WEEK 3. Listening: Sound and Anthropology

What is my relationship to sound? I <3 silence. During the first week of lockdown, my partner and I committed ourselves to 3 days of silence. It was bliss. It felt spacious and cleansing. Calming and productive. Non-verbal communication meant that we made more eye contact with each other and in some ways this reduced the confusion brought on by too much choice with words. I am an advocate for silence, but I understand that having it or being able to access it is somewhat of a privilege. Reflecting on a trailer we watched as part of the lecture, 'In Pursuit of Silence' in some ways it evidences this privilege, a comment on the video crudely sums up some of my thoughts. It seems to suggest that silence is accessed by travelling to dramatic landscapes far from civilisation, not so accessible for a lot of people. It could be argued that noise pollution and socio-economic status are linked. Often noisy environments are difficult to escape.

Different sounds mean different things to different people. Noise that feels familiar and comforting to some might induce anxiety in others. When I was growing up in Glasgow, on an evening it wasn't uncommon to hear a lone drunk man finding his way home from the pub, singing incoherent folk songs or football chants to himself. For some reason, I would always find this comforting. Later in life after I would notice the difference in the calibre of street sounds as I moved around different parts of Newcastle. Realising that after moving to a more urban area, after living in a middle-class neighbourhood, that I had missed the sound of police sirens and late night crawlers making themselves heard in the streets, it made me feel 'at home' and part of the bustling city.

LEARNING LAB - Notes

Task one.

We were asked to recite a passage from one of the weeks readings.

I chose the passage below from Ingold's - Lines: Chapter on Language, music and notation, because I really loved the image implied of a journey taken when reading a story. As if we as the reader are free to roam around the environment created by the text, each finding our own individual way through the tale, drawn in different directions by details that resonate with us personally. And with each return to that landscape, through re-reading, a new detail is found and a different journey taken.

“In reading, as in storytelling and travelling, one remembers as one goes along. Thus the act of remembering was itself conceived as a performance: the text is remembered by reading it, the story by telling it, the journey by making it. Every text, story or trip, in short, is a journey made rather than an object found. And although with each journey one may cover the same ground, each is nevertheless an original movement. There is no fixed template or specification that underwrites them all, nor can every performance be regarded as a compliant token that is simply ‘read off’ from the script or route-map (Ingold 2001: 145).”

Task two.

We were asked to take a three minute audio recording.

In taking up the task of making a recording. I ventured out with my sound recorder with no agenda whatsoever apart from to simply listen to the environment and press record at random. I made a few recordings but the one above represents for me the notion sketched out in the passage from Ingold's chapter. This recording was made whilst I waited in the car as my partner collected an office chair for me from an old art studio building. In an exercise in audio voyeurism, I recorded the sounds as someone from the studios took out the bins at the front of the building. What I like most about the recording is the depth created by the degrees of action happening over varying distances. This really helps to conjure up images in the mind, as you try to place yourself spatially in the sound. Internalising the sound experience, imagining a landscape.

Soundscape? Ingold wouldn't be happy!

Seeing sound. The listening eye?

Design drawn from memory by woman of Caimito village 1981 - from Tim Ingold – Lines - Chapter on Language, Music and Notation. Reminds me a lot of these images produced by Chladni plates.

Sound vibrations on Chladni Plates.

WEEK 2. Looking: Photography & Observational Drawing

"the line that is drawn is one that moves." (Gray, 1971:9)

How well do we actually see when we look? Is our perception filtered through our own experience?

When we were asked, why should anthropologists be concerned with the visual? My initial thoughts, based on my experience with filmmaking, were that we should be concerned with the visual because I believe that what is seen cannot always be said. There are layers of meaning that can be construed from an image, of course as the age old adage goes ‘a picture speaks a 1000 words’. It is this ineffableness that attracts me personally to image making.

To look at my previous film work, it becomes obvious that I like to anonymise the figures in the frames. I usually dissect, cut and distort bodies. It is an intentional practice, the figures in the images represent an idea, they are open to interpretation but my framing and editing is suggestive of the story I wish to tell.

When we consider image making in anthropological practice, it is a common misconception to think that those images of life represent a certain truth about the subjects within them. But it could be argued that the anthropologist is also framing and editing based on the desired story they which to tell.

Questions to think about from Lecture 2:

To what extent can we maintain a distinction between photography as ‘taking’ and drawing as ‘making’?

To take a photograph, to make a drawing? To make a photograph, to take a drawing?

With drawing there is usually notable time taken to construct the picture. This time gives the opportunity to build a relationship with the person in front of you as moments for conversation and two-way interaction arise. To be drawn in some ways is to be admired. (I'm thinking of the film 'Portrait of A Lady on Fire' which I watched around the time of this lecture). To draw someone or something is to look intently and continue to shift your gaze back and forward between your drawing and the subject. Re-looking, noticing changes, shifts in movement. Zoning in, forensically on the detail of the subject. Depending on the skill on the artist, it's likely that the picture won't look exactly like the subject. What is created in a subjective representation based on the experience, skill and tastes of the drawer.

With taking a photograph or indeed a video, the camera mediates and in some ways acts as a barrier between observer and participant. I would question whether the camera can be ignored and whether, particularly with video, what you get is an accurate depiction or a slightly staged or performed scene? The camera in this sense becomes part of a performance between researcher and participant, who are also performing. To take a photograph, in some respects but not all, is a quick process. It could be argued that the photographer does not look as intently as an illustrator would at the subject. Again of course this is not always the case!

It is possible for the camera to convey emotion (sympathy, empathy, disgust?) by the use of camera angles, perspective, lighting etc. Stylistic choices which also acts as mediator between the subject and the viewer. This reminds us that when we engage with any material created by another individual, we are seeing a world through their eyes. The image is made behind the camera, so to speak.

How might the camera be more effectively used in anthropology if approached in the same way as drawing?

Can photos or video be to drawing what drawing is to walking in Tim Ingold's opinion in Lines: Chapter on Drawing, writing and calligraphy? Where “drawings like walking can be seen as a form of wayfaring" – meaning the process of moving through the world in an improvisatory way. If so, then to draw with a camera (Edwards, 2015) is to follow your eye and the action and trace a path or a journey that is carved by the life that unfolds around you, as you document. Going into an environment without preconceived ideas about what it is you wish to capture. Letting the action guide you. The camera can be seen as an eye, an "extension of the senses.” (Grimshaw & Ravetz, 2015: 262). This path like the “leading lines,” described in Ingold's chapter– "embody in their very formation the past history, present action and future potential of a thing."

Notes on an argument for visual anthropology

• "The social act of image making" (Grimshaw & Ravetz, 2015)

• “opening up meditative space around a subject” (Grimshaw & Ravetz, 2015)

• "Anthropology being ‘seen’ rather than read." (Edwards, 2015)

• Critiques - Photography in anthropology and the act of trimming out the ‘excess’ information through framing. (Edwards, 2015). Manipulating narratives

• Willingness to relinquish control over editing - film finding its own form

Ideas of trace___________lives extending beyond the duration of the film___________life goes on when no one is watching

Watched:

Beautiful Colour – Amanda Ravetz

Notes:

• An observational documentary of learning disabled artist Ian Partridge at work

• Just draw. The act of unselfconsciously picking up the pencil and drawing

• Thoughts I’ve had previously when thinking about my sister the unselfconscious artist. She is extremely productive.

• Love that sound of sharp pencil drawing on a hard surface – sensory pleasure

NIISHII: Night Worlds – Saranya Nakak

Notes:

• The cameras presence

• The children staring curiously at us, in the same way we stare curiously back

• That gaze that’s hard to break

• How electricity is changing their lives

• “The light ghost” – night duty, the superstition

• The real stories behind the superstitions

• The cinematic focus on the light with stories overlaid

• Women walking at night is mentioned – not encouraged, socially frowned upon. Husband and wife conflict of opinions regarding this – the cameras presence and the opportunity for truth and confession

• The embarrassed smiles

• “traversing realms of experience, imagination and time.”

Learning Lab Observations:

Nikon Camera blind sketch

- "relying on the edges" - to guide me round, omitting the detail or at least confusing it and getting it in the wrong place.

Workshop Notes:

First Task

We were asked to take photos – one normal, one distorted (moving), one heavily edited.

I took one picture of outside my window to show where I was in the world (as I had only meet the class online via Microsoft Teams thus far), and the last two of my face editing and distorting the images beyond recognition. I am not actually taker of selfies but for some reason my mind drew a blank when we were asked to take pictures of something. I guess the task made me think of material culture and realise that I am not so object orientated, what I am really concerned with is identity and the multiple interpretations of it.

Second Task

Based on a task from Causey's - 'Drawn To See', we were asked to select an object to draw.

I chose a Nikon film camera. We were instructed to draw the object but conceal the page we drew on with a cloth, effectively drawing blind, unable to see the image we were producing (see image above). As I drew, I noticed that I tried to cling to the edges of the object, drawing the outline meant not having to deviate so much from the page. My spatial awareness of the paper meant I could proportionally place the image with relative ease. However when it came to adding detail, I was required to leave the peripheries and find the centre, which was not so easy to do. The result is an image distorted and inaccurate but still recognisable as a camera. A disruption of seeing, causing slippery perceptions.

Thoughts:

Can you convey your own emotions, thoughts through your image? Or will people feel their own?

The act of:

Taking a photo - trying to convey a message. Framing.

Making a drawing - trying to make understood what is drawn.

It's all about interpretation. Drawing (image making) is a translation from subject to eye to mind to hand and this opens up space for interpretation. What will be produced on paper is not always predictable. But it cannot be denied that what has been produced is unique to you, seen through you and your experience and even your muscle development!

Sketch made whilst listening to Taussig's 'I Swear I Saw This'