Sunday, 18 February 2007
The Roots of Writing
(from Dene Grigar's course blog on 'Language, Text and Technology')
This image of a horse, from the Caves of Lascaux located in Southern France, is believed to have been created around 1400 BCE. The caves are filled with such images. Some scholars argue that the images represent pictorial stories of hunting expeditions humans undertook. Others argue that they represent rituals humans engaged in to guarantee successful hunts. The truth be told, the silence of the images tells us little. Hence, when we think about the notion that texts speak, we are more apt to think about texts whose writing technologies offer more exacting information.
Below are images of various writing technologies or artifacts that recall them.
Boustrophedon
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/boustrophedon.jpg
Communication Models
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/communication_model.jpg
Cuneiform
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/cuneiform_details.jpg
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/cuneiform.jpg
Hieroglyphics
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/hieroglyphics.jpg
Mayan Hieroglyphics
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/mayan_hieroglyphs.jpg
Phaistos Disk
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/phaistos_disk.jpg
Rosetta Stone
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/rosetta_stone.jpg
Stoichedon
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/stoichedon.jpg
Printer's Mark
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/printers_mark.jpg
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Essential readings:
The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present
By Eric A. Havelock
Yale UP, 1988, Paper $17.00
ISBN: 0300043821
The History of Writing
By Steven Roger Fischer
Reaktion Books, 2003, Paper, £9.95
ISBN: 978 1 861 89167 9
Writing Machines
By N. Katherine Hayles
The MIT Press, 2002, Paper, $19.95
ISBN: 0-262-58215-5
Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness
Edited and with an Essay by Edward A. Shanken
By Roy Ascott
University of California Press, 2003
Downloadable eBook version available:
Adobe E-Reader at ebooks.com, $15.95
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3 comments:
"This image of a horse, from the Caves of Lascaux located in Southern France, is believed to have been created around 1400 BCE." Check your date, mate !
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This was a lovely blog poost
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