ANTH 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Live Action Role-Playing Game, Meta-Communication, Tribal Art
Art and Anthropology
“To understand the art of a culture is to understand the people who made it
and the culture that produced it”
-
We look at art through its cultural context - learn more from it when we know
about the people who made it - learn more about certain ideas in a culture
through their art.
-
Use art as a guide to understanding the values and ideals of culture
-
Art can highlight changes – voice of dissent
-
When we look at art we can better explain and interpret the world around us
-
What is Art?
Art is the application of imagination, skill, and style to matter, movement, and
sound that goes beyond the purely practical
-
What art is an vary depending on the cultural context
-
When the object, etc. is non utilitarian
-
Art is also a product of social relationships. These cultural products tell us much
about the world in which they were made and, sometimes, provide a window
into the past.
-
Objects can give window to what was going on in the past - archaeology
-
To begin to understand art produced in different contexts, we must explore
culturally variable aesthetic criteria
-
aesthetic criteria is the underlying principles that make something appealing or
beautiful - what is aesthetically appealing varies by culture and individuality
Major Categories
Anthropologists study variations in art, its preferred forms cross-
culturally, and the way culture constructs and changes artistic tradition.
○
Categories of art:
Eras - Paleolithic or Modern
§
Medium of expression (how artistic expression manifests itself)
§
Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.)
§
Decorative Arts (interior design, landscaping, costume design, body
adornment)
§
Performance Arts (music, dance ,theatre)
§
Verbal Arts (poetry, writing, telling stories, telling jokes)
§
○
-
Transformation-representation
The process in which experience is transformed as it is represented symbolically
in a different medium.
-
Transform a three dimensional human form into a two dimensional flat painting
(Represent something in a different way)
-
Poems (Poem transforms experience into concentrated and tightened language)
-
Dancing (Ballet - see dancer with swan lake, a dancer represented by a swan. In
the experience of that artistic expression we see that metaphor and we accept
it and believe it)
-
Metaphoric
-
‘Fine’ Art vs ‘Folk’ Art
Fine Art is a western-centric judgement that defines the art as rare and
expensive. Art produced by artists usually trained in the western classical
tradition.
-
Folk Art is all other art, sometimes referred to as ethnic art, primitive art or
crafts.
-
"Fine Art" characteristics – ‘art for art’s sake’
-
"Folk Art" characteristics - often more utilitarian but people find these utilitarian
objects aesthetically pleasing go under the category of art
-
Resistance of this notion that art is only what a group of Western experts define
it as.
-
Art by intention versus art by Appropriation (objects at first not meant to be art
but became it)
-
Performance Arts
The performance arts include: music, dance, and theatre
-
Ethnomusicology –the cross cultural study of music
-
Involves a range of topics for study
-
The Artist
Going beyond the study of the products and look at the artists
-
Study art from the artists perspective
-
Study the social status of the artist (can give more context in some cultural
situations the artist may be wealthy but may also be stigmatized or
economically marginal)
Usually the artist creating fine art are from higher social classes or
supported by those in higher social status’ in Western classical
○
-
Art and performance arts are more specialized in State-level societies.
May work in a society where they cant devote there time to art because
they have to spend a certain amount of time per week pastoralizing,
foraging, etc.
○
-
Play
Play is consciously adopted by the players
-
somehow pleasurable
-
Alludes to the non-play world, transforms objects, roles, actions, and activity.
-
Serves no direct utilitarian purpose for the participants
-
Limited in terms of time
-
Rules
-
Questions Anthropologists ask
What are children learning about their cultural expectations and gender
roles through play?
○
How do such activities link or separate different groups within or between
societies or countries?
○
How do certain activities relate to group identity?
○
-
Play – Transformation of Perspective
Time for children to "try on" adult roles
-
Moving from everyday reality to play reality requires a transformation of
perspective. (shift requires metacommunication)
-
Requires metacommunication
communication about communication. It provides information about the
relationship between those who are communicating.
○
-
There are two kinds of play
Framing – marketing certain behaviors as "play" or "ordinary life"
/marked in different ways (marks when entering the play reality)
○
Reflexivity - Play suggests that ordinary life can be understood in more
than one way. (It communicates what can be, rather than what should be
or what is)
○
-
Effects of Play
Rehearsal for the real world
-
Comment and criticize the world of
-
adults
Increases children’s creativity and originality by allowing them to overcome
limitations (limitations of age, maturity, inexperience)
-
Adult Play
Allow adults to try on different roles, experiences, be creative, form cultural
identities with others
-
Examples include:
Halloween
○
Mardi Gras
○
Carnival
○
SCA
○
Gaming
RPGS
§
LARP
§
○
-
Sport
Games and sports can be interpreted as: reflections of social relationships and
cultural ideas.
-
"A physically exertive activity that is aggressively competitive within constraints
imposed by definitions and rules. A component of culture, it is ritually
patterned, game-like, and of varying amounts of play, work, and leisure"
Play is not aggressively competitive
○
-
Form of personal and social identification for fans
-
Fans are invited into a make-believe world
-
Sport and the State
institutionalization of sport at the state level helps complex modern societies
cohere.
-
Sharing of symbols and behavior (wearing team merchandise)
-
At university level the support of the huskies team = support for the U of S
-
In Canada the big unifier is hockey. Hockey makes up part of our ‘Canadian-
ness’ whether we like it or not. Even if we don’t participate, we still know about
it as it is so persuasive in Canadian culture.
-
Sport gives us a coherent cultural identity. It can help us come together
(Olympics for example- come together to support the country)
-
In Saskatchewan we have the Saskatchewan Roughriders or ‘Riders’
-
“Subculture of the Riders” –It has a set of learned and shared behaviours and
beliefs. It has symbols. It is integrated
Its very much its own culture
○
Gives people in Saskatchewan a shared identity
○
-
Seven Dimensions of Objects
height, width, and depth
-
_____ (history) - an object’s individual
-
history
_______indicates the inequality reflected by objects
-
___________reflects the fact that objects can be used to display wealth and
social status
-
____________is the recognition that different individuals and groups find
different patterns aesthetically pleasing
-
Analysis of a Bike
physical dimensions, but it may also be viewed as an expression of artistry.
-
-
What associations does the bike’s owner
-
have with it—memories, values, etc.?
a _____________, part of a complex economic system. Its parts were likely
manufactured in other areas of the world.
-
Finally, the bike is practically useful
-
Week 7, Lecture 12
Art and Anthropology
“To understand the art of a culture is to understand the people who made it
and the culture that produced it”
-
We look at art through its cultural context - learn more from it when we know
about the people who made it - learn more about certain ideas in a culture
through their art.
-
Use art as a guide to understanding the values and ideals of culture
-
Art can highlight changes – voice of dissent
-
When we look at art we can better explain and interpret the world around us
-
What is Art?
Art is the application of imagination, skill, and style to matter, movement, and
sound that goes beyond the purely practical
-
What art is an vary depending on the cultural context
-
When the object, etc. is non utilitarian
-
Art is also a product of social relationships. These cultural products tell us much
about the world in which they were made and, sometimes, provide a window
into the past.
-
Objects can give window to what was going on in the past - archaeology
-
To begin to understand art produced in different contexts, we must explore
culturally variable aesthetic criteria
-
aesthetic criteria is the underlying principles that make something appealing or
beautiful - what is aesthetically appealing varies by culture and individuality
Major Categories
Anthropologists study variations in art, its preferred forms cross-
culturally, and the way culture constructs and changes artistic tradition.
○
Categories of art:
Eras - Paleolithic or Modern
§
Medium of expression (how artistic expression manifests itself)
§
Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.)
§
Decorative Arts (interior design, landscaping, costume design, body
adornment)
§
Performance Arts (music, dance ,theatre)
§
Verbal Arts (poetry, writing, telling stories, telling jokes)
§
○
-
Transformation-representation
The process in which experience is transformed as it is represented symbolically
in a different medium.
-
Transform a three dimensional human form into a two dimensional flat painting
(Represent something in a different way)
-
Poems (Poem transforms experience into concentrated and tightened language)
-
Dancing (Ballet - see dancer with swan lake, a dancer represented by a swan. In
the experience of that artistic expression we see that metaphor and we accept
it and believe it)
-
Metaphoric
-
‘Fine’ Art vs ‘Folk’ Art
Fine Art is a western-centric judgement that defines the art as rare and
expensive. Art produced by artists usually trained in the western classical
tradition.
-
Folk Art is all other art, sometimes referred to as ethnic art, primitive art or
crafts.
-
"Fine Art" characteristics – ‘art for art’s sake’
-
"Folk Art" characteristics - often more utilitarian but people find these utilitarian
objects aesthetically pleasing go under the category of art
-
Resistance of this notion that art is only what a group of Western experts define
it as.
-
Art by intention versus art by Appropriation (objects at first not meant to be art
but became it)
-
Performance Arts
The performance arts include: music, dance, and theatre
-
Ethnomusicology –the cross cultural study of music
-
Involves a range of topics for study
-
The Artist
Going beyond the study of the products and look at the artists
-
Study art from the artists perspective
-
Study the social status of the artist (can give more context in some cultural
situations the artist may be wealthy but may also be stigmatized or
economically marginal)
Usually the artist creating fine art are from higher social classes or
supported by those in higher social status’ in Western classical
○
-
Art and performance arts are more specialized in State-level societies.
May work in a society where they cant devote there time to art because
they have to spend a certain amount of time per week pastoralizing,
foraging, etc.
○
-
Play
Play is consciously adopted by the players
-
somehow pleasurable
-
Alludes to the non-play world, transforms objects, roles, actions, and activity.
-
Serves no direct utilitarian purpose for the participants
-
Limited in terms of time
-
Rules
-
Questions Anthropologists ask
What are children learning about their cultural expectations and gender
roles through play?
○
How do such activities link or separate different groups within or between
societies or countries?
○
How do certain activities relate to group identity?
○
-
Play – Transformation of Perspective
Time for children to "try on" adult roles
-
Moving from everyday reality to play reality requires a transformation of
perspective. (shift requires metacommunication)
-
Requires metacommunication
communication about communication. It provides information about the
relationship between those who are communicating.
○
-
There are two kinds of play
Framing – marketing certain behaviors as "play" or "ordinary life"
/marked in different ways (marks when entering the play reality)
○
Reflexivity - Play suggests that ordinary life can be understood in more
than one way. (It communicates what can be, rather than what should be
or what is)
○
-
Effects of Play
Rehearsal for the real world
-
Comment and criticize the world of
-
adults
Increases children’s creativity and originality by allowing them to overcome
limitations (limitations of age, maturity, inexperience)
-
Adult Play
Allow adults to try on different roles, experiences, be creative, form cultural
identities with others
-
Examples include:
Halloween
○
Mardi Gras
○
Carnival
○
SCA
○
Gaming
RPGS
§
LARP
§
○
-
Sport
Games and sports can be interpreted as: reflections of social relationships and
cultural ideas.
-
"A physically exertive activity that is aggressively competitive within constraints
imposed by definitions and rules. A component of culture, it is ritually
patterned, game-like, and of varying amounts of play, work, and leisure"
Play is not aggressively competitive
○
-
Form of personal and social identification for fans
-
Fans are invited into a make-believe world
-
Sport and the State
institutionalization of sport at the state level helps complex modern societies
cohere.
-
Sharing of symbols and behavior (wearing team merchandise)
-
At university level the support of the huskies team = support for the U of S
-
In Canada the big unifier is hockey. Hockey makes up part of our ‘Canadian-
ness’ whether we like it or not. Even if we don’t participate, we still know about
it as it is so persuasive in Canadian culture.
-
Sport gives us a coherent cultural identity. It can help us come together
(Olympics for example- come together to support the country)
-
In Saskatchewan we have the Saskatchewan Roughriders or ‘Riders’
-
“Subculture of the Riders” –It has a set of learned and shared behaviours and
beliefs. It has symbols. It is integrated
Its very much its own culture
○
Gives people in Saskatchewan a shared identity
○
-
Seven Dimensions of Objects
height, width, and depth
-
_____ (history) - an object’s individual
-
history
_______indicates the inequality reflected by objects
-
___________reflects the fact that objects can be used to display wealth and
social status
-
____________is the recognition that different individuals and groups find
different patterns aesthetically pleasing
-
Analysis of a Bike
physical dimensions, but it may also be viewed as an expression of artistry.
-
-
What associations does the bike’s owner
-
have with it—memories, values, etc.?
a _____________, part of a complex economic system. Its parts were likely
manufactured in other areas of the world.
-
Finally, the bike is practically useful
-
Week 7, Lecture 12
Document Summary
To understand the art of a culture is to understand the people who made it and the culture that produced it . We look at art through its cultural context - learn more from it when we know about the people who made it - learn more about certain ideas in a culture through their art. Use art as a guide to understanding the values and ideals of culture. Art can highlight changes voice of dissent. When we look at art we can better explain and interpret the world around us. Art is the application of imagination, skill, and style to matter, movement, and sound that goes beyond the purely practical. What art is an vary depending on the cultural context. Art is also a product of social relationships. These cultural products tell us much about the world in which they were made and, sometimes, provide a window into the past.
