Choosing a Medium

I really enjoyed Mike's post about the metal plates and it started me wondering, is there a correlation between the medium used and the kind of document preserved? There are records from the Chinese preserved on wood, bamboo, silk, stone, paper, metal, and ceramic. I hypothesized that more domestic things would be preserved on ceramic, silk, and bamboo while the official institutional documents would be kept on paper, metal, and stone.

European Writing and Art.

Europe is famous for it's philosophy and art. Both are ways in which knowledge and ideas can be passed down and preserved.

School of Athens painting by Raphael.

I realize Europe covered a broad range of civilizations, but I wanted to specifically talk about the influences that certain civilizations had during the Renaissance era.

Although technically not an apprenticeship, the teachings of philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (as I mentioned in my previous post) were passed on orally throughout the Greek Civilization. However, the development of various writing systems allowed their philosophies to be written and made available to many others, which lead them to be understood by many others. As a result of being written down, thoughts were preserved not only for the use of those who lived during the Renaissance era, but for the many generations of people who lived after the Renaissance era. Written forms of thoughts also made it easier for one to be taught or tutored by others, since philosophies and actual facts could be referenced without having to be memorized.

Michelangelo's Pieta.

Regarding Ancient Greece, "specific craft-based evidence is scanty, and we remain in darkness about the content and duration of these apprenticeships...[but] the tradition of known apprenticeships can cover a span of many generations...[As for the trade of sculpting] each sculptor beginning as an apprentice and then becoming a teacher to a new aspiring sculptor. This craft relationship is further strengthened by a blood relationship, since crafts were very often family-based, with the father teaching his son or a male relative" (Apprenticeship in Ancient Greece). Unlike philosophical tutoring, painting and sculpting were considered actual trades. These skills were used to provide income for the artist and the family, which is why it was most often passed on through relatives.

Italian artists also continued their trade mainly through relatives or close family friends. Michelangelo, for example, was sent off at a young age to live with a wet nurse who was married to a stone cutter. At a very young age, Michelangelo began to develop a love for stone and as he became older he was taught by the stone cutter how to handle various types of stone. Now, years later, Michelangelo is known for his many famous sculptings such as the "Pieta," "Madonna of the Stairs" and "David."

These sculptures are now records, different than that of a written record, which help us to determine the thoughts and ideologies that Renaissance artists and people in general had about religion and philosophy through the means of emotion.

Through both written philosophy and preserved works of art, we have been able to unravel the ideas and thoughts that Ancient scholars and artists had which have greatly impacted how we, as a Western culture, view the world. How do art and writing, which are both expressive and informative forms of preservation, differ in the ways of how we understand Ancient cultures'? What are some pros and cons to each method of preserving ideas and passing along knowledge?

Scraping Metal

This golden disk found in Peru is an contains
an inscription of a calendar system.

A few months ago they played a special on the Discovery channel about  discoveries of America before Columbus.  After talking about various theories about who were actually the first people to travel to the New World, they came to the conclusion that pretty much everyone discovered America at one point in time.  They finally changed their question from "Who discovered America?" to "Who didn't discover America?".  Well today I am not going to talk about the discovery of America but the making of metal books.  To those of us who are LDS (such as members of our Reinventing Knowledge class here at BYU) metal plate writings might be of special interest because the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient record engraved on golden plates.  Although engravings on metal plates were at one point thought of as a rare occurrence, recent discoveries have shown more and more examples of this form of information storage.  As you will see in this post, we might pose ourselves a similar question:

"Who didn't write on metal plates?"

The beauty of the text

Eusebian Canons from the Book of Kells

Islamic Calligraphy

As promised, I have put together a little post on calligraphy. Calligraphy is the art of beautiful writing. Most cultures with a form of written language have elevated portions of that writing to art. This goes beyond the idea of good penmanship, it is more than clear uniform writing, it allows creative presentation of the text to accentuate the message conveyed by its meaning. In this way it is different than the utilitarian writing; it is not an efficient conveyor of ideas, it is a fine art like sculpture or painting.

Etruscan Knowledge Institutions

During our unit on oral knowledge, I discussed knowledge institutions within the Etruscan civilization here. Last week, I talked about Etruscan writing and language here. This week, my assignment is to talk about knowledge institutions within the Etruscan civilization, as a part of our unit on written knowledge.

The Origins of the Alphabet, Phoenician Style

In the beginning, there were Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform.  From that sprung the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet that is the Mother of every other alphabetic system known to man.

MAYA GLYPHS: the de facto source of written aesthetisicm

Vada Creative Studio © 2011

I am currently working as an intern at the graphic design firm called, Vada Creative Studio (check out their Facebook blog too) where I was talking on Friday to the other graphic designers about typesetting and font design. There are so many different intricate details that going into making a font. A team of many people spend hours upon hours designing a single font. They pay attention to the minute details because they know how important aestheticism is crucial. As I have said before, most recently in my latest comment, that I have a sore spot for the visual appeal of things. The Mayan's knew, just like font creators, graphic desingers and the "not so visually or creatively gifted people" alike consciously or subconsciously know that the aesthetic nature of a writing system is important. It affects how the message you have is delivered and subsequently understood. For this reason I am excited to study the Mayan Language because it is one of the most visually appealing languages that the earth has ever seen.