The medium is the real message, here

Today, Wired's science news blog posted an article about paleoartist Viktor Deak, who provided the reconstructions for the PBS documentary Becoming Human. Deak sculpts models of early hominids and imports a series of pictures of the sculptures into Photoshop, where he makes composite images and tweaks them to make their appearance more "realistic." The blog post suggests that Deak thinks the digital medium is useful for conveying more accurate ideas about the past (or at least, the people of the past). For instance, he gushes,

"I’m excited about it, because it means you’re not just dealing with static appearance,” he said. “One of the great challenges of science communication is taking dead, dusty things we find in the ground, and helping people understand that these were part of a living world. Our ancestors were living and dying, just as we do. Bringing things to life in the digital world can really help.”

Much of the article implies that because these digital reconstructions are mobile (or animated), they seem to be alive, and are therefore best to illustrate a form of past life. Mobility probably doesn't make an image more lifelike: we can look at static pictures of modern humans or animals, and understand that they are living. Equating animation with life is not only not useful, it may be harmful. Animating Deak's reconstructions brings into question the ways our ancestors moved, and creating new problems for representing the past.

My reaction to the Wired article reminded me of Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan would remind us to consider the "effects" of the medium, not just its content. Specifically, he might want us to employ his tetrad of media effects to analyze the sort of meaning that the digital medium creates. He would encourage us to determine

1. What the medium enhances
2. What the medium makes obsolete
3. What the medium retrieves that has been obsolesced earlier
4. What the medium flips into when pushed to extremes

I've already begun to answer these questions (1. mobility, 2. stillness) with regard to Deak's work, and I will certainly consider them as I prepare my ethnographic account of our class, and analyze our construction of knowledge about Inca culture.

Image from http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/viktor-deak-paeoartist/

African Fractals

Hearing Dr. Zuidema describe the ceque system this week, and even compare it to a computer, reminded me of Ron Eglash's work on African fractal geometry. Eglash is an ethno-mathematician and professor in the Science and Technology Studies department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In the 1980s, Eglash noticed that traditional African architecture was based on fractal geometry. He began to study other parts of African culture, looking for recursion in other contexts. He found social hierarchies, hair braiding techniques, and textile patterns that were similarly self-organizing.

Recursive weaving pattern. Image from http://csdt.rpi.edu/african/African_Fractals/homepage.html

Nankani homes are a series of fractal cylinders. Image from http://csdt.rpi.edu/african/African_Fractals/culture5.html

I don't think that the ceque system is the Inca version of fractal geometry, but Eglash's research is useful for our website. His analysis of African mathematics is used to teach African communities computing skills. Eglash has developed tutorials for relevant math concepts that instill users with pride in their heritage and encourage them to learn modern computing skills.

If we are still allowed to entertain wild ideas for our final project, I would consider developing a tutorial on the mathematics of the ceque system to use for school children in the Andes.

Naked Archaeology

I recently came across an old episode of Naked Archaeology--actually, I think it's the very first podcast--which happens to discuss Peru's historical ecology. I'm having trouble embedding it, so follow this link and scroll down to the bottom of the page if you want to listen.

The first segment features David Beresford-Jones, an archaeobotanist who studies the collapse of Nazca civilization. The prevailing explanation for the Nazca's demise is El Nino flooding. However, Beresford-Jones feels that it is wrong to ascribe cultural change to climatic events entirely. In an article in Nature, he notes that "...this [explanation] is not satisfying based on what we know about human culture. It paints a picture of culture sitting there, not changing, hit by events over which they have no control. But Native Americans did not always live in harmony with their environment."

Beresford-Jones and his colleague Alex Chepstow-Lusty have analyzed the pollen left by the Nazca's landscape at different time periods. They found that early in Nazca history, most pollen was left by riparian trees, like huarango, indicating that their land was heavily wooded. Over time, though, pollen sources were mostly agricultural (maize and cotton), indicating that the Nazca cut down their woodlands to make way for farmland. Unfortunately, these trees had a major impact on the local biodynamics: the huarango trees lowered floodwater velocity, allowing it to soak into the ground and replenish the water table. Deforesting the landscape allowed for El Nino to hit the floodplain directly and erode the farmland, rather than recharge groundwater that was essential to future crop viability.