I have been thinking about the singular world view of humans and the widely held assumption that our social systems, communication and brains are superior to that of all the other creatures living on this planet.. I am interested in the subtle and non-comprehensible ways in which the world, unseen to human eyes, goes on around us, I see it as millions of parallel dimensions existing alongside one another.
I am interested in exploring the interaction between humans and animals, and in particular, the place where two worlds collide. It's that space that interests me, the gaze of one set of eyes to another, of two species connecting on different tracks. This connection happens from time to time and tends to give the feeling of having experienced a 'moment' with another creature, but animals are living a different by set of rules to us and the emotional connection we put onto these situations is something quite different to the reality of what actually happened, here lies my interest in the point in between, the point where it is possible to connect on some level.
In this way, I also think it is possible to consider this point of connection in terms of the object and the viewer. It's the place where a connection is made, a meta-physical space, nothing touching anything else, just a recognition of some sort happening, sparked by the meeting of two sets of world views, in the case of viewer and object, the object; inanimate yet communicative, represents the view/interests/personality and emotions of a non-present participant while the viewer looks on through eyes soaked in their own life experience.
In human and animal interaction both bring their own sets of life experience to the table, none more valid than the other and each putting their own way of seeing things onto the situation, in an effort to understand it. The idea that one possesses the capacity to reason while one does not is questionable and I am unsure that it even matters when one discards the singular Biblical worldview of human superiority and accepts that there are many ways of seeing.
http://www.kunsthalle-bern.ch/en/agenda/exhibition.php?exhibition=131
http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=634
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Burnett_Tylor
Monday 22 February 2010
Wednesday 3 February 2010
A Bird in the Hand
If you get them at the right time of year, many birds are easy to catch. For an agile hunter, a small boy for example, there isn't much of a problem in collecting eggs and chicks from the nest; some adults can also be snatched by hand. Commercial hunters in the nineteenth century reported that Passenger Pigeons - once their eggs had hatched - could be plucked right off the nest.
Even among birdwatchers there are those who feel the need to possess the birds, if only symbolically. To have them is to tick them off your list. And the best list is 'the life list'- the record of all the species you have ever seen.
What is it, this urge to own another living creature? And why is it that we understand so well the universal symbol of the bird being set free from the cage?
Monday 1 February 2010
Primitive Culture
Tylor's "Primitive Culture"
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S207.htm
Excerpt from by a review by Alfred Russell Wallace, published in 'The Academy', 1872
It is perhaps inevitable that in the present chaotic state of our knowledge of man's mental nature and its relation to his visible organism, a work like the present should be unsatisfactory. The minute anatomy of the brain has been long ago exhaustively investigated, while the comparative study of its form and size in different races and individuals has been carried on by means of extensive collections of crania and casts; yet, although the brain is almost universally admitted to be the organ of the mind, by neither of these lines of research nor by any combination of them, have any definite conclusions been arrived at as to the relation of the brain to the various mental faculties. Up to the present day our physiologists dispute as to whether the forehead or the occiput is the seat of the intellect, yet they scout the idea of giving up their hitherto barren line of investigation, in favour of that experimental method of comparing function with development which, the much-abused phrenologists maintain, leads to complete success. Equally unsatisfactory is the practice of leaving out of view, in theories of mental development, the numerous well-established cases of abnormal mental phenomena which indicate latent powers in man beyond those usually recognised. These are looked upon as obscure diseases of the nervous system, and although their occurrence is very rare to individual experience, the records of them are now sufficiently voluminous to furnish comparable cases to almost all that occur. They can thus be grouped into classes, and this fact, of each one forming an item in a group of analogous cases, is supposed to preclude the necessity of any attempt at a rational explanation of them. This is the method very largely adopted by Mr. Tylor, who in treating of the beliefs, customs, or superstitions of mankind, seems often to be quite satisfied that he has done all that is required when he has shown that a similar or identical belief or custom exists elsewhere.
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S207.htm
Excerpt from by a review by Alfred Russell Wallace, published in 'The Academy', 1872
It is perhaps inevitable that in the present chaotic state of our knowledge of man's mental nature and its relation to his visible organism, a work like the present should be unsatisfactory. The minute anatomy of the brain has been long ago exhaustively investigated, while the comparative study of its form and size in different races and individuals has been carried on by means of extensive collections of crania and casts; yet, although the brain is almost universally admitted to be the organ of the mind, by neither of these lines of research nor by any combination of them, have any definite conclusions been arrived at as to the relation of the brain to the various mental faculties. Up to the present day our physiologists dispute as to whether the forehead or the occiput is the seat of the intellect, yet they scout the idea of giving up their hitherto barren line of investigation, in favour of that experimental method of comparing function with development which, the much-abused phrenologists maintain, leads to complete success. Equally unsatisfactory is the practice of leaving out of view, in theories of mental development, the numerous well-established cases of abnormal mental phenomena which indicate latent powers in man beyond those usually recognised. These are looked upon as obscure diseases of the nervous system, and although their occurrence is very rare to individual experience, the records of them are now sufficiently voluminous to furnish comparable cases to almost all that occur. They can thus be grouped into classes, and this fact, of each one forming an item in a group of analogous cases, is supposed to preclude the necessity of any attempt at a rational explanation of them. This is the method very largely adopted by Mr. Tylor, who in treating of the beliefs, customs, or superstitions of mankind, seems often to be quite satisfied that he has done all that is required when he has shown that a similar or identical belief or custom exists elsewhere.
Animism
Belief in the existence of spirits separable from bodies. Such beliefs are traditionally identified with small-scale ("primitive") societies, though they also occur in major world religions. They were first competently surveyed by Edward Burnett Tylor in Primitive Culture (1871). Classic animism, according to Tylor, consists of attributing conscious life to natural objects or phenomena, a practice that eventually gave rise to the notion of a soul. See also shaman.
Paul Gaugins attempt to enter into the 'primitive' world
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://communitas.princeton.edu/blogs/wri152-3/altucker/GauTehura.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/altucker/archives/002058.html&usg=__RxUPd0_lC7yun7T5YHaVm_RAGMw=&h=285&w=384&sz=24&hl=en&start=10&sig2=gieOtE3tPpinxOdNl5U4KQ&um=1&tbnid=WqQlay9-6_C6QM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dprimitive%2Bculture%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1&ei=YM5mS9-2ItHK-QbNt4SyBw
Paul Gaugins attempt to enter into the 'primitive' world
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://communitas.princeton.edu/blogs/wri152-3/altucker/GauTehura.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/altucker/archives/002058.html&usg=__RxUPd0_lC7yun7T5YHaVm_RAGMw=&h=285&w=384&sz=24&hl=en&start=10&sig2=gieOtE3tPpinxOdNl5U4KQ&um=1&tbnid=WqQlay9-6_C6QM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dprimitive%2Bculture%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1&ei=YM5mS9-2ItHK-QbNt4SyBw
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
