Early Art History

[Skyweir]

Who are you V .... and how the fuck do you know so much shit

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Vraith is not a person. Vraith is an AI which lives in the Internet; it shows up from time to time.

[Vraith]

Vraith is not a person. Vraith is an AI which lives in the Internet; it shows up from time to time.

I wish...in a way...I want the speed. OTOH, there are still plenty of things that even a baby lemur can do that AI can't. Which is why I constantly say I want to be a true cyborg. Just some powerful digital layers integrated with the several bio layers and networks we already have.
[[I think, eventually and maybe soon, we COULD make a "computer" that operates like we do---but why? Why not keep it doing the things it does way better than us, and let us do enhanced versions of what we do? Cuz I'm NOT convinced it can do both equally well. heh..."knowledge precludes knowledge" may or may not be true...probably is, at deep levels...but structures preclude structures is definitely true.


Sky...plenty of people know more than me, and are way smarter than me. Even just here on the Watch.
The two things I think I have that are maybe at the point are a synthesizing/corralling/structuralizing nature, and a perpetual vacuum/scanning compulsion. [[in my bookmardks, I have a folder labeled "News"...it has 6 normal news sites from around the world, 3 aggregating news sites, 2 physics, 3 general science, 3 lit, 2 philosophy, 6 youtube arts channels, and I now have random music running always--random GENRE, not just bands. [[did you know Nigerian Jazz is a thing? I didn't/wouldn't except my cousin runs a show out of Japan called Tokyo Jazz.]]
I go to all those places every day at least once, usually much more.
My head ain't the biggest or the fastest of the strongest...but it is sticky and doesn't stop...even, and especially when I want it to. Like while sleeping/dreaming.
It's actually much more problem than fun, but we ain't going into my shit.

[Skyweir]

Ahhh .. ok so not an alien intelligence .. possibly OCD and probably cyborg ... but whatevs .. its working for you.

And we all got shit

[Vraith]

More findings like this and we will have to seriously reconsider all our ideas about early humans and early art.

And even more so in light of recent examination/proposal that many of the very early cave paintings---30-40K years ago, and scattered all over the place, far apart---are not JUST hunting paintings, but fairly sophisticated astronomy.

Pretty amazing to me [though I've always had the idea...I think I argued a little about it with peter once...that humans 50/60/75K years ago, at least, weren't much different from us at all] to have evidence they had art interests/understanding AND science interests/understandings. They didn't yet have the society/population/background tech to know what we know...but they absolutely had the brain power and perspective/interest.

First link is a blurb about it. But for once, the actual article is available free, second link is that [it's like 30 pages, fair warning.]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridainepa ... 2c16a41751


https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2 ... eatman.pdf

[peter]

Interesting stuff V. I'm not entirely convinced by the 'starmap' hypothesis; it has an aspect of .... I don't know......'projection' if you like, about it. I mean it's nice, it seems appropriate - but perhaps this work is really just what it seems on the surface to be, our early attempts at figurative representation (no - in many cases very sophisticated forms of figurative representation). As with say scratches on bones (they may be early attempts at pattern construction - but they may also just be scratches on bones) there is a real risk of flying of on a flight of fancy in this field (because it so intimately concerns us and where we came from) and we need to use Occam's Razor mercilessly if we are not to race of down blind alleys, to forever become lost in a sea of speculative fog through which there is no navigation to the one solid destination we have - us.

In respect of the other - I'm not sure if I was ever arguing that the guys of yore were fundamentally different to us in their cognitive abilities, their powers of ratiocination - in fact, I love that we have this huge period of human history (about 60 plus thousand years) where we were essentially us, but just not writing things down. I love to speculate on what tricks we used, what skills we developed, since lost when eclipsed by the power to physically record both the tally of our daily accounts and our history in the longer sense - and how the development of this one tool changed us at the most fundamental level, which I'm sure it did. But that said, I'm certain that there are theories out there that propose that there have been significant changes in the way that the human mind works over the course of our development - the bicameral mind theory of psychology and the cognitive revolution idea of anthropology (?) to name but two - and I think the idea is that when these changes have started, they have occured pretty rapidly rather than as a gradual and incremental evolution. What would cause these 're-wireings' I have no idea, or indeed if they truly occured - but something seems to have happened around 70ish thousand years ago to jolt us forward.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

First link is a blurb about it. But for once, the actual article is available free, second link is that [it's like 30 pages, fair warning.]

https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2 ... eatman.pdf

I give them full credit for confidence.

We use the scientific method to arrive at this conclusion. The basis of all empirical science is the statistical analysis of measurements combined with logical deduction. Our measurements for precession of the equinoxes are made using an established and accurate software, Stellarium, able to predict the positions of stars and their constellations in earlier epochs. These measurements are compared with calibrated radiocarbon dating measurements of the age of European cave art. Through this comparison of predicted and measured dates, we verify our scientific hypothesis to an extraordinary level of statistical confidence, far surpassing the usual demands for publication of scientific results. Therefore, in a scientific sense, we prove our hypothesis is correct. Essentially, our statistical result is so strong that, unless a significant flaw in our methodology is found, it would be irrational to doubt our hypothesis. It follows that any proposition about these artworks that is inconsistent with our hypothesis can automatically be rejected--it is almost certainly wrong, since our hypothesis is almost certainly correct.

Aside from that, a very interesting read. I suspect that there was an advanced civilization in the distant past that suffered some sort of natural or astronomical disaster sufficient to erase completely its physical existence. Some of its knowledge survived, though, thus accounting for similarities in animal representations, motifs, and architecture scattered across multiple societies

[Vraith]

but something seems to have happened around 70ish thousand years ago to jolt us forward.

That's not what I'm really disagreeing about...
Between 150 and 75k years ago some things happened...
They may or may not have been hard bio-changes...
they may have been opportunistic---the hard/software existed, but the
environment/circumstances didn't make them of primary importance until then...

What I really am "against" so to speak is something you mentioned earlier [or in another thread] where some try to put the paradigm/cog-rev/whatever MUCH more recently...in the last [depending on who is making which claim] 2, 5, or 10k.
And THAT's just flat out wrong.

Aside---why would we have to be "projecting?"
Why would early representational art be separate from observed and useful communication of long-term knowledge?
Why would "celebrating the hunt" be separate from showing where, when, and how good hunting was best accomplished? The skies, the observables embodied in it, are inherently necessary for great hunting...even more so than spear chucking.
And the non-sky necessities everyone knows all the time...they can learn it in hours...
The sky-necessities take years, decades, generations...

[Ur Dead]

Around 80 to 70 thousand years ago scientists claim that the supervolcano
Toba blew up and bottlenecked the human race to near extintion.

A lot of DNA was lost to that eruption and may have allowed the remaining
abilities to branch and diverse.

But there isn't any means now to see what was lost or it may filter out where
only the smart ones survived.

[Skyweir]

Brilliant input .. very much enjoyed reading V, Peter, Ur ... and Hashi on point quote you cited .. enjoyed reading all.

Am interested in .. the why deflection .. if it occurs to you Peter to elaborate further.

The study itself seems so well based that refuting it would in and of itself be emblematic of a flawed perspective. But one can always question and refine.

[peter]

I've got to be honest, I've argued so much bullshit here over the years that anything s possible - but I'm not aware of having argued for the rewiring of the cerebral hardware as early as only a few thousand years ago (though wait....., didn't the guy who proposed the bicameral mind idea suggest that it could have pertained as short a time ago as into the era of writing {hence explaining some of the way things recorded in biblical writings as dialogues with second parties, when in fact they were conversations occuring between distinctly partitioned areas of the bicameral mind}....this is probably it.)

In respect of the starmap argument - it's completely possible, I grant you. And the whole point of the scientific method is that it can be checked, can be verified. If the correlation between this early art and the reverse engineered positions of stars and planets is truly there, as the man says in his egregiously supercilious pronouncement quoted by Hashi, then his confidence will be vindicated by the rest of the community, and we can then begin to consider what this means. (By the way - do we not already have this kind of speculation going on in respect of the Dogon tribe of Mali, who iirc, have 'starmaps' showing star systems light years away, including binary stars it is no way possible to see with the named eye - does the same degree of statistical analysis bear out these correlations as well.) I'm not going to lie though, these harder, more rational and materialistic seeings sitting at the heart of the dawn of art are less satisfying to me than ones that pertain more to a mankind more in tune with the animistic world he inhabits; a place where the hard distinctions of our world between the material and the spirit, what is and what has been, do not exist - a place where man can commune with his ancestors, can travel on different planes with the animal spirits via the means of going deep within, as well as looking far without.

[Vraith]

(By the way - do we not already have this kind of speculation going on in respect of the Dogon tribe of Mali, who iirc, have 'starmaps' showing star systems light years away, including binary stars it is no way possible to see with the named eye

We might...I think I I saw part of a thing on that quite a while ago...5? 10? years? give or take??
Didn't one piece of it also involve a celebration and masks/reenactments and such?

I keep/kept meaning to check deeper on that but didn't/haven't..

But it's definitely the case that aspects of ancient peoples/cultures required detailed long-term communicable knowledge...and word/ritual can be effective, but can also be much more easily lost...

the Aussie songlines are pretty fucking good, but the situation was different/special...and also, when it's talked about, folk often neglect the information in the more "art" based MUSIC of the things [rhythm, pitch, intonation, duration], act as if only the words matter. But lots of white folk found out that knowing just the words could put you between a rock and a hard place [if not dead] right fucking quick.

Which is another thing.
Lot's of people seem to think intentional mulitplicity/multipurpose/multi-function meaning, cross-genre/field embedding is a "new" thing---even a [depending on ones position] rich/valuable or stupid/absurd post-modern thing.
But it ain't.
Form follows function...yea, but also form creates functions...
Art for Art's Sake...yea, but also:
---for human's sake
---for descendent's sake
---for Truth's sake
---for Beauty's sake
---for the dark side's sake
---for preservation's sake
---for invention's sake
---for Christ's fucking sake
---for fuck's sake

[[and just for fun, cuz I know a bunch of people here...including really smart fuckers here...hate "postmodernism," I'll insert this true statement:
You can hate some particulars or particular people/threads in postmodernism...
But if you just plain hate or ridicule it in its entirety, you
---don't understand it
---hate people
---hate reality
---some combination of those three.]]


[[[it's been brought to my attention that some find it annoying or me not worthy cuz I say fuck all the time...and that made me notice I hadn't said it enough lately.
L fucking O fucking L]]]

[peter]

I'll fucking raise a glass to that V! You wanna "fuck" - you "fuck"!

Arrgh! Postmodernism! Bought a book called Postmodernism made Simple, read it three times and I still don't have the fist idea what it is!

My love of cave art is long standing and has always (I freely admit) been shot through with a romanticism that probably bears more relationship to the Disney film Alpha than to the brute practicality of the function it really served to it's makers. But I love that the message of those long ago members of our human family can still be read, the connection is still there, even if the full meaning is lost to us. That notwithstanding, anyone who looks at the world of Cave Chauvet can feel the intent - or at least part of it - in the sophisticated illusion of movement, expressionistic and vital, exemplified therein. This has always been a part of my contention; there is a big risk (as with analysis of any art) that if you look too close you begin to fail to see the wood in your concentration on the trees. My thinking is that, for all the valuable insights the application of measurement and statistics can give us into the multifunctional aspects of the works, someone has at some point just to stand back and immerse themselves in the works; not think, or measure or direct - just simply look. Do it long enough, deeply enough, and I trust that that long ago message will find it's way through in the form of insight and understanding.

[Skyweir]

Beautifully captured Pete and yes sometimes more can be gained through stillness and silence.

[Cord Hurn]

This has always been a part of my contention; there is a big risk (as with analysis of any art) that if you look too close you begin to fail to see the wood in your concentration on the trees. My thinking is that, for all the valuable insights the application of measurement and statistics can give us into the multifunctional aspects of the works, someone has at some point just to stand back and immerse themselves in the works; not think, or measure or direct - just simply look. Do it long enough, deeply enough, and I trust that that long ago message will find it's way through in the form of insight and understanding.

Sipping a tasty glass of wine while staring at the art can't hurt, 'cause even if I don't get the right interpretation, I'm not minding in the least.

[Vraith]

Postmodernism made Simple, read it three times and I still don't have the fist idea what it is!

someone has at some point just to stand back and immerse themselves in the works; not think, or measure or direct - just simply look.

Heh...on the first, I suspect that's because it isn't one thing in any real way.
It's more of a stance dance you do than anything. I mean, in most ways the philosophical/critical meanings/uses of it are barely connected to the artist's creations executing/embodying it.
OTOH---if you start going deep into the weeds and fundamentals of OTHER -isms/ists, they really aren't any simpler...they just bury the hard stuff in the roots, post displays it like flowers.
NOTE/WARNING: if you ever run across a guy named Seth Abramson [and you might--for some reason people keep listening to him.] spewing words about "metamodernism" [[or any of his poetry or anything else he does]] Close your eyes and set it on fire. He's a fucking idiot. Warning you cuz he's just tricky enough that he can suck you in for a bit...seems to make just enough sense that you think the nonsense feeling is cuz you're missing something. You aren't...don't want you to waste the time in the hole with him, though]].

On the second---of course immersing and "just looking" is the starting point/inspiration behind the making/how the stuff you're looking for got IN there in the first place. All the layers/multifunction are inherent.
Informational AND representational AND presentational all at once.
Like the chest cavity---you may have to cut it up/open to learn some things...but unless you put it back together, it's murder, not surgery and you won't learn anything more.

[peter]

Therein I think could lie the problem; does science have a method to put butterflies back together?

[Vraith]

Therein I think could lie the problem; does science have a method to put butterflies back together?

Hints/inklings...

[[though some scientists don't like that part....]]

But people who think they have equivalent...
[or even superior]...
understanding of the butterfly...
while knowing NO parts...

are not simply lost...
or incomplete...
they're...
deluded....
or lying...