Interpreting Textual Artefacts

Interpreting Textual Artefacts
Colloquium, University of Oxford, 11 Dec 2012
Some notes



14.00-15.45: Materiality and Visual Perception, Chair: Dr Dirk Obbink (Classics, Oxford)

‘Beyond Art and Agency: The Sensory Impacts of Objects’, Professor Chris Gosden (Archaeology, Oxford)

• Early 20thC, a close connection between Structuralism and language placed emphasis on finding meaning in the relationships (or structures) between artefacts (much as language requires grammar and context to create meaning from letters and words)

• Mid 20th C, Post-Structuralism moved this emphasis away from relationships, and more focus on structuring rather than structure. This meant that meaning was far less stable

• In the context of interpreting textual artefacts, this marked a shift from artefact as text to text as artefact

• Focus is then on the individual artefact and what it can tell us about those associated with it – we create the world and the world creates us

• Gosden gave an example from Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency: a decorated canoe prow from Papua New Guinea which was studied less for its iconography and more for it’s functionality

• This ‘technology of enchantment’ divorces visual reception from an aesthetic response, i.e. it is more about sensory impact 

• Celtic art might be interpreted in many different ways – in a sense this cannot be proven so more attention fixed on the artefact and what it does rather than what it mean

• Artefact as technology rather than art

‘The Impact of Reflectance Transformation Imaging on Interpretive Processes for Ancient Egyptian Graphical Culture’, Dr Kathryn Piquette (TOPOI, Berlin)

• Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is technology which captures artefacts using raking light

• Artefact and camera are fixed but position of light shifts producing many different images which are integrated into an interactive file using an algorithm

• PTM files are especially useful for analysis of the surface of a textual artefact

• Piquette especially interested in the scribal act rather than just the product so this form of capture very beneficial  for analysing maker’s marks etc

• Since this form of digitisation is an interpretive act, recommends getting researcher involved in the process to direct capture, and keeping a log on decisions made

• Raking light enhances the ‘materiality’ of the artefact in the digital and encourages ‘activation of embodied cognition’

Useful refs:
James Gibson 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Dobres 2000. Embodied Practitioner
Dobres 2002. Technology and Social Agency.
Ingold 2007. Materials Against Materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14(1): 1-16

‘The architecture of visual object recognition and attention’, Professor Glyn Humphreys (Neuroscience, Oxford)

• Talk focused on the ways our ‘attention systems’ seem to operate

• Segmentation or grouping of features of a complex image allow the brain to reduce the number of neural circuits required to process an image and therefore the amount of time needed to complete a visual task

• The more parts of the brain required to process an image, the greater the chance of interference

• Colour, depth and motion can help isolate or segment features since these are picked up by the ‘early cortical’ areas of the brain (this is done most effectively in advertising but the act of digitisation could also direct attention – wittingly or unwittingly – to particular parts of an artefact using one of these strategies. Most routinely done by photographing an artefact in black and white – drawing attention to light and shade through colour – or RTI scanning of a cuneiform tablet which captures depth)

• Learning can play an important part in the way that the brain responds to visual stimuli – segmentation can therefore be influenced by schooling or discipline (Communities of Practice)
16.15-17.15: Kinaesthetic Engagement in Reading, Chair: Dr SégolèneTarte (e-Research Centre, Oxford)

‘Reading movement: morphology, ductus, and reading skills for medieval Latin scripts’, Dr Dominique Stutzmann (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, Paris)

• Strong association between the process of reading and writing as observed in the study journals of students tasked with interpreting medieval scripts (some studies mentioned by Prof Laurent Cohen have shown that children learn to read much quicker once they learn to write suggesting the two are linked neurologically)

• All learning styles favoured writing scripts to understand them – this is a kinaesthetic response to make sense of the unfamiliar. Reading and writing closely linked

• Stutzmann demonstrated a new study website in which students can isolate and collect characters from a digitised script, and a ‘magic pen’ which allows students to trace the form of characters to aid the kinaesthetic learning process

• This form of ‘cognitive archaeology’ is akin to handling an artefact to gauge how it was once handled, i.e. to get into the mindset of the creator or original owner of an artefact

‘Contribution of Writing Knowledge to Visual Recognition of Graphic Shapes’, Professor Marieke Longcamp

• Longcamp spoke about scientific studies which underline Stutzmann’s point that the hand and the mind are working together in reading and writing

• One study showed that learning handwritten characters much more successful in short and medium term than learning characters that are typed

• Motor resonance patterns in the brain shows that the act of reading and the act of writing (with the hand) are connected

• More difficult to process mixed scripts i.e. partially typed, partially handwritten

• More resonance when readers are looking at their own handwriting > someone else’s handwriting > typewritten

• Implications for artefacts: manuscripts have potentially bigger impact, suggests that handling of artefacts as precursor to object ‘reading’ worth researching