Ontologies of Rock Art is the first publication exploring a wide range of ontological approaches to rock art interpretation, constituting the basis for ground-breaking studies on Indigenous knowledges, relational metaphysics, and rock imageries. The book contributes to the growing body of research on the ontology of images by focusing on five main topics: ontology as a theoretical framework; the development of new concepts and methods for an ontological approach to rock art; the examination of the relationships (...) between ontology, images and Indigenous knowledges; the development of relational models for the analysis of rock images; and the impact of ontological approaches on different rock art traditions across the world. Generating new avenues of research in ontological theory, political ontology and rock art research, this collection will be relevant to archaeologists, anthropologists, and philosophers. In the context of an increasing interest in Indigenous ontologies, the volume will also be of interest to scholars in Indigenous Studies. (shrink)

Images and Power: Rock Art and Ethics addresses the distinctive ways in which ethical considerations pertain to rock art research within the larger context of the archaeological ethical debate. Marks on stone, with their social and religious implications, give rise to distinctive ethical concerns within the scholarly enterprise as different perceptions between scholars and Native Americans are encountered in regard to worldviews, concepts of space, time, and in the interpretation of the imagery itself. This discourse addresses issues such (...) as the conflicting paradigms of oral traditions and archaeological veracity, differing ideas about landscapes in which rock art occurs, the intrusion of "desired knowledge", and how the past may be robbed by changing interpretations and values on both sides. Case studies are presented in regard to shamanism and war-related imagery. Also addressed are issues surrounding questions of art, aesthetics, and appropriation of imagery by outsiders. Overall, this discourse attempts to clarify points of contention between Euro-American scholars and Native Americans so that we can better recognize the origins of differences and thus promote better mutual understanding in these endeavors."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

A process-based approach to archaeology combines traditional third-person data collection methods with first- and second-person inquiries. Drawing from the traditions of cognitive archaeology, transpersonal psychology, and ecopsychology, this mixed-methods approach can be thought of as a movement toward a more holistic or “integral” archaeology. By way of example, a prehistoric rock art site on Ometepe Island, Nicaragua is explored from the inside (through the researcher's lucid dreaming incubations) as well as in relationship with the researcher's embodied presence (an exploration (...) of environmental hermeneutics). These multiple perspectives can be seen to situate the researcher's worldview and biases within the context of the study as well as perhaps lead to new questions about the significance of these cognitive artifacts. (shrink)

Rock art - paintings, and pecked or engraved images on rocks, whether in caves, shelters, or in the open-air - exists in all but a couple of countries of the world [Bahn, 1998], It spans a period from at least 35,000 years ago to historic times, comprises many millions of images from hundreds of thousands of sites, and thus constitutes the vast majority of the world's art, and art history. It is a phenomenon that has seen a huge upsurge (...) of interest in the last few decades, with not only numerous publications and conferences, but also a proliferation of calendars, T-shirts, mugs, jewellery, and garments bearing rock art images. Many people who are famous for other things have worked on or published rock art - for example, scholars such as Mary Leakey or authors like Joy Adamson or Erle Stanley Gardner. Rock art studies have always been the domain of the “amateur” as well as the “professional”, and amateurs remain of huge importance in this field. Indeed, most of the principal rock art organisations, along with their journals, were created by, are run by, and consist largely of amateur enthusiasts who include some of the world's foremost specialists. The growing popularity of the art brings an ever-increasing risk of pollution, damage, and vandalism, as well as outright thefts of wall or cave images. The rock art associations are dedicated to the discovery, recording, and conservation of rock art, and play a major role in striving to teach schoolchildren and adults alike about the incalculable importance of this irreplaceable, universal heritage and about the need to respect and protect it. (shrink)

Heart Robot was a public engagement project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The aim of the project was to challenge cultural perceptions of robots, and to stimulate thought and debate in members of the general public around research in the field of social and emotional robotics. Fusing the traditions of Bunraku puppetry, the technology of animatronics and the field of artificial emotion and social intelligence, Heart Robot presented a series of entertaining, thought-provoking, and moving performances at (...) fourteen events in the south-west region of the UK between May and December 2008. This paper presents a summary of the independent evaluation of the project. Keywords: Robot, Puppet, Public Engagement, Social Robots, Science-art collaboration. (shrink)

The combination of ethnographic and cognitive neuroscience research provides considerable insight into the origin and symbolism of Native Californian rock art. Although made by different social groups for different purposes in various parts of the state, the ethnographic record demonstrates that the art depicts the mental imagery and somatic hallucinations of trance, taken to represent supernatural experiences. When this art is viewed from a cognitive neuroscience perspective, it suggests that the shamanistic state of consciousness was far from primarily "ecstatic," (...) instead often involving the generation of unpleasant emotions; and that biochemical changes during trance necessitated the making of rock art if the memory of these supernatural experiences was to be preserved. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume are written by scholars from a wide range of disciplines (anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy and psychology). The papers ostensibly address how to evaluate rock art, but can also be read in the context of offering support for the affirmative in the debate regarding whether aesthetics is a cross-cultural discipline. Two alternative conceptions of the aesthetic provide the underlying antithesis and thesis respectively to all papers. The antithesis holds that the aesthetic pertains to (...) a conception of art that is an historical artefact of eighteenth century Europe. Most of the writers refer to this idea of art in terms of the object of a disinterested gaze (a second-hand reading of Kant), or as ‘art-for-art’s-sake’. The thesis of all papers, be it explicit or implicit, is that the aesthetic is a certain human predisposition or capacity to imbue physical properties with meaning and value; to link the sensuous with the semantic; to find meaning in form (Lamarque pp.27-8, Morphy pp.54, 59.). Some authors extend this beyond the artefact to the perception of nature (see the papers of Heyd, Ogawa, Stone). (shrink)

This paper provides a brief history of neuropsychology in southern African San (Bushman) rock art research before moving on to describe what is known as the neuropsychological model. It shows how the model has added a powerful tool to the ethnographically‐based interpretation of the art by applying it to two paintings. Following this, some future possibilities for using the model are discussed.

This article analyses the sign systems or semiotic models that make up the meaning of a double face or mask drawing in the pre-Columbian rock art of Colombia, also discussing two human figures with depicted faces associated with the main picture. The sample of rock art was detected on the walls of the Chicamocha Canyon at the Mirador de Barcenas site in the Santander Department in Northeast Colombia. Its origin is attributed to the Guane chiefdom. We hold as (...) a central argument that this face and its gestures were part of a sign system or visual semiosphere that spread along the banks of the Chicamocha Canyon. However, the image shared some semiotic models and visual communication strategies with societies that inhabited areas in central Colombia located hundreds of kilometers away from the site studied. We support this claim because the forms, the use of the space in the images, and the gestures of a hieratic character appear both in the faces of the petroglyphs of the Huila Department as well as in some pre-Hispanic gold masks from the Cundinamarca region. The images of the rock art faces were analysed using a visual semiotic model based on the suggestions of the Mu group and analyses by Felix Thurleman and Jean Marie Floch. The analysis was complemented by Jacques Fontanille’s proposal for the levels of semiotic relevance, with Juri Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere employed as a key concept. (shrink)

In 2003, Peratt demonstrated that rock art images worldwide bear a remarkable similarity to high-energy plasma discharge formations. In later papers, Peratt located the plasma discharge column in which all of these would have occurred at the Earth’s South Pole. This article accepts the relation between the rock art images and the plasma formations, but concludes that the geometry of the reconstruction is incompatible with the global occurrence of the rock art images. As a corollary, the finer (...) details of the reconstructed column must also be called into question. In particular, the reconstruction of the top cusp, the two upper plasmoids, and the filamentary sheath in a single column at the South Pole cannot be reliably deduced from the data as presented by Peratt. All evidence points to a worldwide distribution of the phenomena. (shrink)

Image-making is a nearly universal human behavior, yet the visual strategies and conventions to represent things in pictures vary greatly over time and space. In particular, pictorial styles can differ in their degree of figurativeness, varying from intersubjectively recognizable representations of things to very stylized and abstract forms. Are there any patterns to this variability, and what might its ecological causes be? Experimental studies have shown that demography and the structure of interaction of cultural groups can play a key role: (...) the greater the degree of contact with other groups, the more recognizable and less abstract are the representations. Here we test this hypothesis on a real-world dataset for the first time. We constructed a balanced database of Indigenous Australian rock art motifs from both isolated and contact Aboriginal groups (those often in contact with other groups). We then ran a survey asking participants to judge the recognizability of the motifs and to provide interpretations. Results show that motifs from contact Aboriginal groups were more likely to be judged as inter-subjectively recognizable and also elicited more convergent descriptions than motifs from isolated groups. This is consistent with the idea that intergroup contact is likely to be an important factor in the cultural evolution of pictorial representation. We discuss the implications of these findings for the archaeology and anthropology of art, and the parallels with language evolution. (shrink)

In a period of high definition, photorealism, and postmodern deconstruction the experience of art making, its theory, and its art itself have drifted away from some understandable connection to the process of art creation as a connection to some psychologically deep inspiration. Abstract art as conceived and practiced by Wassily Kandinsky, which included in his later stage beyond representation or abstractions of representation jumbled gatherings of biomorphs with no connection to representation may be compared to the White Shaman rock (...) art panel with its gathering of seemingly abstract geometric images as well as transformed representational imagery, much like the related Fate Bell Shelter rock art and Three Rivers Petroglyphs. Kandinsky would claim his expressed abstractions are prompted by his psyche. The artist or artists of the White Shaman panel of the lower Pecos River operated under transformed consciousness and Shamanism. Kandinsky’s “unconscious, spontaneous expression” and “expression... of inner feeling” may be compared to the probably hallucinogenic connection to the other world in the White Shaman panel. Such connections and abstractions and transformations could be related to the “total theater” of Diaghilev and the contemporary rave dances in which consciousness is heightened by sensory overload. The cybernetic capacity of the computer age has worked in another direction and even “objectified” consciousness itself. (shrink)

Is the creative act like a volcano: an outburst that lights up the universe? This volume connects reason with desire and the arts in ways that enable us to imagine how creativity can bring us closer to the truth. The artistic quest for freedom stands in stark contrast to philosophy's call to subordinate art to reason and tradition. The struggle between them has culminated in artistic attempts to subsume philosophical matters within the domain of art. One central question in this (...) study is what the consequences will be of a final dissolution of the boundary between the two domains: will all that remains of the artwork be an abstract howl of the rock – our rock, the planet – itself? (shrink)

Rock Records explores the intricate entanglements between Anthropos and Geos through a wide range of writings about stone, from media theory and ecophilosophy to the role of stones in art and the aesthetics of viewing stones. Authors engage the activity, vitality, and relationality of lithic matter and articulate multiple modalities of 'geo-affection,' as well as forms of geo-mythology, geo-sociality, and occult lithography. As the initial issue in a new digital/intermedial series of SubStance aimed at interweaving creative and critical work, (...) Rock Records also features digital versions of essays with photo-rich content, as well as a virtual exhibition of viewing stones and a series of speculative studies in... (shrink)

This paper discusses the state-of-the-art dispute over the ontological question of rock music: what is the work of art, or the central work-kind, of rock music, if any? And, is the work of rock music ontologically distinct from the work of classical music, which is the only musical tradition whose ontology is vastly studied? First, I distinguish between two levels of inquiry in musical ontology: the fundamental level and the higher-order level, in which comparative ontology – the (...) project in which someone engages by considering that there is ontological variety among works of distinct musical traditions – falls. After addressing two general questions about rock music, I turn to Theodore Gracyk’s ontological account of rock music, according to which the primary focus of critical attention in rock music are recordings, or recorded tracks. This view has the consequence that ‘recordings’ is a fundamental concept of philosophy of music, necessary for us to understand rock music. Stephen Davies objected that Gracyk’s account fails to assign appropriate value to a valuable practice with which rock audiences are committed, live performance, and argued that the works of rock music are of the ontological kind for studio performance. Finally, Andrew Kania synthetized both views: rock recorded tracks are at the centre of rock as an art form, thus being the rock works. For, different reasons, none of these views is deemed satisfactory. (shrink)

Chinese culture is distinguished among the world’s other great traditions by the depth and intensity of its love for rock and stone. This enduring passion manifests itself both in the art of garden making, where rocks form the frame and the central focus of the classical Chinese garden, and also on a smaller scale, in the practice of collecting stones to be displayed on trays or on scholars’ desks indoors. This essay sketches a brief history of lithophilia in China, (...) then adduces the most important philosophical presuppositions for it, and concludes by suggesting some implications for our experience of, and interactions with, the realm of stone and rock. (shrink)

Gracyk, Kania, and Davies all agree that the rock tradition is distinctive for the central place that it gives to the appreciation of recorded tracks. But we should not be led by those arguments to conclude that the central position of the recorded track makes such appreciation the exclusive interest in rock. I argue that both songwriting and live performance are also central to the rock tradition by showing that the practice of recording tracks admits of a (...) diversity of goals and aims that is not exhausted by a concern for track construction. (shrink)

Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism is the first book-length work to explore the interrelationships between contemporary female musicians and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, music, and literature by women and men. The music and videos of contemporary musicians including Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, The Carters, Hélène Cixous, Missy Elliot, the Indigo Girls, Janet Jackson, Janis Joplin (and Big Brother and the Holding Company), Natalie Merchant, Joni Mitchell, Janelle Monáe, Alanis Morrisette, Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith, St. Vincent (Annie Clark), and Alice (...) Walker are explored through the lenses of pastoral and Afropresentism, Gothic, female Gothic, and the literature of William Blake, Beethoven, Arthur Schopenhauer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Dacre, Ralph Waldo Emerson, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Ann Radcliffe, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Horace Walpole, Jane Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth to explore how each sheds light on the other, and how women have appropriated, responded to, and been inspired by the work of authors from previous centuries. (shrink)

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” -/- Karl Marx might have been thinking of punk rock when he wrote these words in 1847, but he overlooked the possibility that new forms of solidity and holiness could spring into existence overnight. Punk rock was a celebration of nastiness, chaos, and defiance (...) of convention, which quickly transcended itself and developed its own orthodoxies, shibboleths, heresies, and sectarian wars. Is punk still alive today? What has it left us with? Does punk make any artistic sense? Is punk inherently anarchist, sexist, neo-Nazi, Christian, or—perish the thought—Marxist? When all’s said and done, does punk simply suck? These obvious questions only scratch the surface of punk’s philosophical ramifications, explored in depth in this unprecedented and thoroughly nauseating volume. Thirty-two professional thinkers-for-a-living and students of rock turn their x-ray eyes on this exciting and frequently disgusting topic, and penetrate to punk’s essence, or perhaps they end up demonstrating that it has no essence. You decide. -/- Among the nail-biting questions addressed in this book: Can punks both reject conformity to ideals and complain that poseurs fail to confirm to the ideals of punk? How and why can social protest take the form of arousing revulsion by displaying bodily functions and bodily abuse? Can punk ethics be reconciled with those philosophical traditions which claim that we should strive to become the best version of ourselves? How close is the message of Jesus of Nazareth to the message of punk? Is punk essentially the cry of cis, white, misogynist youth culture, or is there a more wholesome appeal to irrepressibly healthy tendencies like necrophilia, coprophilia, and sadomasochism? In its rejection of the traditional aesthetic of order and complexity, did punk point the way to “aesthetic anarchy,” based on simplicity and chaos? By becoming commercially successful, did punk fail by its very success? Is punk what Freddie Nietzsche was getting at in The Birth of Tragedy, when he called for Dionysian art, which venerates the raw, instinctual, and libidinous aspects of life? (shrink)

Classic rock of the 1960s and early 1970s broke away from the harmless bubblegum and surfing music of the 1950s to become a vehicle for profound commentary upon the human condition. Theories and motifs from major figures in the history of philosophy, theology and literature were refracted and transfigured in this intelligent new popular art form.

The classic essay on the "karesansui" garden by French art historian Berthier has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated history of Zen rock gardens. 37 ...

Philosophers should listen to punk rock. Though largely ignored in analytic aesthetics, punk can shed light on the nature, limits, and value of art. Here, I will begin with an overview of punk aesthetics and then extrapolate two lessons. First, punk intentionally violates widely held aesthetic norms, thus raising questions about the plasticity of taste. Second, punk music is associated with accompanying visual styles, fashion, and attitudes; this points to a relationship between art and identity. Together, these lessons suggest (...) that art appreciation is not just about finding beauty or aesthetic worth but is also about constructing a self. (shrink)

This article responds to the new and major work on Lobby Loyde by Paul Oldham. It focuses on the middle period of Loyde’s career, from the Chicago-period Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs through to Lobby’s work with Sharpie band (was it?) Coloured Balls, and connects and compares Lobby’s trajectory to that of the post-Lobby Aztecs, as expressed in Sunbury, the 1972 parallel Australian event to Woodstock. Who led these processes, the bands or the crowds? If the crowd claimed a band, (...) what happened to musical autonomy in this process? This was a moment when mass audience response became tribal, and opened the possibility that musicians were no longer in charge of their art. Trying to escape from the wiles of the music industry, these musicians instead seem to have become captive to their audiences. (shrink)

Drawing on both anthropology and philosophy, this paper argues that the profiled form of the human hand is a universally recognizable image; one whose significance transcends temporally and geographically defined cultural divisions, and represents the earliest known artistic symbol of the human form. The unique co-occurrence of five properties in the image of the human hand and the way it is recognized support this argument, including that it is: (1) unmistakably a hand, (2) unmistakably human, (3) a universal point of (...) interface, (4) a universal referent of scale, and (5) an easy way of making a complex shape. This underappreciated aspect of hand art makes these images among the most important forms of early artistic expression encountered in the prehistoric record. (shrink)

Explores how the emotional experience of gratitude has been enlisted in neoliberal governance through the language of debt. In The Art of Gratitude, Jeremy David Engels sketches a genealogy of gratitude from the ancient Greeks to the contemporary self-help movement. One of the most striking things about gratitude, Engels finds, is how consistently it is described using the language of indebtedness. A chief purpose of this, he contends, is to make us more comfortable living lives in debt, with the nefarious (...) effect of pacifying the citizenry so we are less likely to speak out about social and economic injustice. To counteract this, he proposes an alternative art of gratitude-as-thanksgiving that is inspired by Indian philosophy, particularly the yoga philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras. He argues that this art of gratitude can challenge neoliberalism by reorienting our politics away from resentment, anger, and guilt and toward a democratic ethic of thanksgiving and the common good. Jeremy David Engels is the Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University. He is the author of The Politics of Resentment: A Genealogy and Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic. (shrink)

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...) central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the relations between musical works, performances, and recordings, are significantly different in the three traditions of Western classical, rock, and jazz music. In classical music the work of art – the enduring primary focus of critical attention – is a piece that receives various different performances. Classical recordings are best conceived of as giving the listener access to performances of works, or perhaps as performances in their own right. In rock, however, recordings (...) are at the centre of the tradition. The work of art in rock is not a piece for performance, but the track itself, as in classical electronic music. Tracks do manifest songs which may be performed live, but these are not the primary focus of critical attention in rock. In jazz, there are no works of art. This is because the primary focus of critical attention in jazz is the performance, and the relation between standard on which the performance is based and the performance itself is too dissimilar from the model of classical work-performance. Jazz recordings, however, like classical recordings, are best thought of as providing access to performances. These ontological issues are important in part because of their implications for evaluation and musical practice. If rock works are ontologically like classical electronic works, then criticism of them should focus not just on their formal harmonic structures, but on their use of timbral and spatial effects. Since classical recordings endure, but live performances do not, performers should ideally take a different attitude to work-interpretation in those two spheres. (shrink)

It could be a part of the task of analyzing the history of the World the analysis of the history of rock. Such analysis could take us into a journey and an experience of unexpected paths of wealth and intricate course. Who follows such paths surely will face much more than mere lyrics, costumes, instruments, chords and musical rhythms. That wanderer better be prepared to confront memories and denounces of war, energetic crisis, works of art and a manifold of (...) manifestations of social and political consciousness. Who travel these paths will live fully the experience if submerges him in an alternative and very promising way of meeting the universal history of the last fifty years. This way of understanding history is all about assuming rock as a soundtrack of the multiple features that is the world. In a few words, rock is a key of interpretation of history. (shrink)

Discusses the relationship between popular music and literature in conjunction with the connection between high and low art.

The very concept of the ‘birth’ or ‘origin’ of art may seem inappropriate, since humans are by nature artists and the history of art begins with that of humanity. In their artistic impulses and achievements humans express their vitality, their ability to establish a beneficial and positive relationship with their environment, to humanize nature; their behaviour as artists is one of the characteristics for selection favourable to the evolution of the human species. Evidence from a huge analysis of rock (...) art and cave paintings and engravings shows that, from their origins, humans have also been Homo aestheticus. (shrink)

En mars 1976, le critique Jon Landau diagnostique un certain dogmatisme dans la critique rock. Celle-ci serait en train de passer à côté du disco parce qu’elle en comprend mal les spécificités esthétiques. Du fait de son ancrage contre-culturel, la critique rock a fait du disco une figure d’altérité radicale, en l’identifiant à une musique commerciale et dépourvue de signification. En fondant mes analyses sur des entretiens de critiques rock et sur des textes critiques des années 1970 (...) évoquant le disco, j’étudie les mécanismes idéologiques et rhétoriques par lesquels la critique rock a contribué à discréditer ce genre musical et son public. Plus largement, je soulève la question de savoir dans quelles conditions la critique d’art peut cesser d’être proprement critique. (shrink)

At odds with the relevance it has as object of aesthetical experience around the world, pop-rock music is still a rare subject in philosophical inquiry. Nonetheless, it has arisen growing interest in the last two decades, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. In such context, this paper intends to give an overview of the philosophical contributions on the subject made so far, and provide some guidelines for its study in the field of aesthetics. After reconstructing the debate, starting from Theodor (...) W. Adorno’s thoughts on mass music as prolegomena and arriving at the so-called “ontologies of rock”, this article takes an aesthetic point of view concerning the specificity of pop-rock and argues that the decisive aspect of the genre in the choir of popular musical expressions lies in the unique role of technology applied in its production. (shrink)