From sketch book





Various sketches and water colour study, learning about shading.

 

 

 

And more "fan art" of "Sunless Seas", definitely channeling a romanticized Victorian theme for comic effect, the effects of a historical distance I suppose. To describe the game, it is like a steam boat voyage, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", where the darkness isn't a metaphor but a comical shadow filled with vague Lovecraftian Cthulhu, Victorian Christian characters and subjects, managing resources and tactics in an aquatic "Alice in Wonderland" environment. I hope my interest in the subject matter is finished.

Notes on Religion & Spirituality, Ayurveda & TCM

Religion can be defined as the search for significance in ways related to the sacred while spirituality is the search for the sacred (Viftrup, Hvidt & Buus 2013).

It is possible to critique the idea of spirituality as commonly understood (Viftrup, Hvidt & Buus 2013). The popular conception of religion is that it is external and has negative connotations while spirituality is more internal and generally has positive connotations. Spirituality in contemporary meanings tends to be decontextualized, but spirituality does not occur in a vacuum. In an individual it arises, develops and unfolds in a larger religious context, even if that context is rejected. Spirituality in contemporary meanings is romanticized, as only being positive, personal and linked to the best in human nature. Confronting such a notion, the spiritual dimension in life can be both positive and negative. Only using positive understandings of spirituality means that measurements of spirituality will be contaminated with positive psychological or human experiences (Viftrup, Hvidt & Buus 2013).

Non Biomedical,Traditional Medical Systems constitute the majority of received health care by the worlds population, at 70-80% as estimated in 2003 by the World Health Organisation (Hartzell 2005). The advantages associated with studying Ayruvedic medicine and traditional Chinese Medicine as examples of Traditional medical systems include the fact that they have bodies of literature to encode their knowledge because they have been produced by societies with writing.

For Ayurvedic Medicine there are references to healing in the early religious texts collectively known as the Atharvaveda but the foundational texts that describe Ayurvedic medicine, dating to around 700 BC (Ninivagg 2008 : 13) are the Caraka Samhita, Susruta Samhita and the Astanga Samgraha (Langford 2002 : 4). The Susruta Samhita describes surgical procedures and is written by Susruta while the Caraka Samhita, written by Charaka and the Astanga Samgraha describe non surgical therapies that include herbal and mineral medicine, massage and blood letting (Langford 2002 :4). There was an acknowledged identification between the external ritual fires used for sacrifice in Vedic religious rituals, an idea of an internal digestive fire and the transformative power of Agni (fire) (Ninivaggi 2008 : 13) in the writings of Charaka and Sushruta, ideas deriving from the Vedic religion. Much of Ayurvedic medicine was recorded by Bhuddhists in the 6^th century and their writing tended to attempt to rationalise the older Vedic traditions removing much ritual (Ninivaggi 2008 : 17).

For TCM the foundational texts include Questions and Answers and Canon on Acupuncture, Two volumes of the Yellow Emperors Canons on Medicine, Shen Nong's Materia and the Treatise on Febrile and Other Diseases (Stella Quah 2006).

The two volumes of the Yellow Emperors Cannons are called the “Huang Di Nei Jing Su wen” (Su wen) with the “Huang Di nei jing ling shu” (Ling shu) (Yellow princes inner classic spiritual pivot), they can be understood as foundation texts in Chinese medical history that are comparable to the tradition of Hippocratic writings deriving from Ancient Europe (Unshuld 2003), the Su wen was compiled over the 3^rd century BC to the 1^st century BC, both texts are both referred to as the Huang Di nei Jing. Song period scholars date the Su wen as written in the Warring State period .

These foundational texts are ancient and are the earliest literature in medical traditions that have been built upon over centuries. There is an element of faith in these traditions in that the ideas contained in the foundation texts tend to be difficult to criticize by people working in these traditions.

In the Ayurvedic Medical Tradition there is an idea that illness occurs because of an imbalance of three bodily dosa (vata “air”, pitta “bile” and kapha “phlegm”), the body is conceived as fluid and penetrable, in a continuous exchange with the social and natural environment (Langford 2002 : 11). To apply these ideas, an investigation of illness (darsan) will consider the predominant dosas evident in the patient’s body in terms of dhatu (tissue) and indriya organs and the patients Prakrti, or constitution (Langford 2002 : 28) which involves consideration of the patients behaviour and their relationship to their environment.




















The Ayurvedic cosmology is composed of five elements, mahabhutas which are prthvi (earth), jal (water), agni (fire), Vayu (air) and akasa (ether) (see figure 3 (From Langford, Jean 2002 : 35). The elements are associated with five senses and body parts, Akasha with sound and the ear, Vayu with feeling and the skin, Agni associated with appearance and the eye, Jalam with taste and the tongue and Prthivi with smell and the nose.

In the petals of the lotus are written three guna sattva (creation), rajas (destruction/ transformation) and tamas (preservation) with two hybrid guna sattvatamas and sattvarajas. Gunas can be described as “attributes or qualities that act to dynamically condition an ever changing arrangement within creation” (Ninivaggi 2008 : 289). All material substances possess these attributes (gunas). The interplay of the dosa modulate the gurvadi guna, or ten pairs of opposing qualities that can be used to describe matter.

Humans in Ayurveda are in a homologous relationship to their environment and the greater nature around them, a microcosm within a macrocosm “pinda-brahmanda” (Ninivaggi 2008 : 38).

In TCM the foundational books contain concepts of macrocosm microscosm correspondences (tien-jen-hsiang-ying) and harmony (tiao-ho) formed from a dynamic balancing. Thus the forces that are perceived in the macroscosm are conceptualised as having counterparts in the microcosm. These correspondences included astronomical systems, seasons, weather and time in the macrocosm and internal organs, functions, sensations and emotions in the microcosm (Keh-Ming Lin 1984). The origin of these correspondences are interesting in that they predate the attempts to rationalize them into a medical system as recorded in literature and may reflect a religious cosmological classification system that is associated with indigenous prophesy, such as the prehistorical origins of the I-Ching.

From this framework three main themes of fundamental importance evolved, the yin-yang system, the Five evolutive phases and the ching-lo (meridian) system.

Disease theory is classified into those that are acting internally and those deriving from external causes. Internal causes are attributed to 7 kinds of emotion, external causes are devided into six categories, wind (feng), coldness (han), hotness (shu), dampness (shih), dryness (tsao) and fire (huo). Wind in this classification system has a unique involvement in that it has the quality of “actively invading”, thus when combined with other properties makes the combination “dangerous” (Keh-Ming- Ling 1984). Wind is described in “Huang di nei jing” as a cause of disease, a natural phenomenon that causes disease within the human body. Its invasive properties had a transforming quality, in the traditional Ancient Chinese cosmology the winds of the four quarters affected food supplies, the direction influenced the seasons and the outcomes of battle (Unshuld 2003).

The concept of Qi may have incorporated the concepts of wind and spirit (gui), and before the rationality of documented TCM, historically, spirits were seen to cause illness and misfortune, an idea that TCM attempts to move beyond. Acupuncture may have initially been seen as a way of dispelling spirits from the body, military metaphors persist in Traditional Chinese medicine that date back to this period (Hartzell 2011).

Social and political life had to synchronize with the rhythm of the eight winds and four seasons. A section of the Mozi, dating to the 4^th century describes a harmony of Yin and Yang, harmony between heaven and earth, harmony of ones body (flesh and skin) through sagely control of the desires (Brindley, Erica 2011). This concept of personhood corresponding to cosmology, political institutions and nature is in stark contrast to modern ideas of the individual,  but the more comprehensive and detailed the vision of cosmic harmony became, the more sharply disharmonies were cast in relief (Unshuld 2003).

Similarities between Ayurvedic Medicine, Tibetan Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine concepts of nature, cosmology and human physiology are striking (Hartzell 2011).

They all feature a fire, water polarity and a wu xing phase classification to understand biophysical processes and categorise medical phenomenon. The concept of a net of qi is similar to the concept of Tantra (web) in Ayurvedic Medicine (Hartzell 2011). This similarity may be due to Ayurveda coexistence with Bhuddhism, which spread to China by AD 65 and a potential early cross fertilization suggested by the recorded origins in pulse diagnosis (Ninivaggi 2008 : 22).

Bibliography

Brindley, Erica. (2011). Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China. Pages 19-20

Hartzell, Magda. (2005). Making sense of indigenous knowledge systems: the case of traditional Chinese Medicine. In Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. (2005). Volume 23, Number 2. Pages 156-175.

Langford, Jean. (2002). Fluent Bodies : Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance. Published by Durham : Duke University Press.

Lin, Keh-Ming. (1984). Traditional Chinese Medical Beliefs and their Relevance for Mental Illness and Psychiatry. In Normal and Abnormal Behavior in Chinese Culture : Culture, Illness and Healing. Volume 2, 1981, Pages 95-111.

Ninivaggi, Frank John. (2008). Ayurveda A Comprehensive guide to Traditional Indian Medicine for the West. Published by Praeger Publishers. Pages 1-349.

Quah, Stella. (2006). Traditional Healing as a Culture. In Innovation, Volume 6, Number 2. Pages 52-53.

Unschuld, Paul U. (2003). Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen : Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an  Ancient Chinese   Medical Text. Published by University of California Press  Ltd.

Viftrup, Dorte Toudal, Hvidt, Niels Christian & Buus, Niels. (2013). Spiritually and Religiously Integrated Group Psychotherapy : A Systematic Literature Review. In Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Volume 2013. 12.

Started playing Faibetters Sunless Seas which was on kick starter.
The typical (my) fan art follows.



   



The games touch point with the audiences shared narrative is of the British Empire of the steam boat era but introduces supernatural elements from Judeo-Christian mythology with dystopian bureaucratic situations. I would characterize it as feeling like Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (1899) with increased supernatural elements.

Water colour of a stone carving of Gollum.
The face seems to evoke more traditional indigenous representations of faces that evoke fear, phobos.

The Rabbits

The Rabbits is an award winning Australian picture book written by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan, published in 1998 and it won several awards including the Aurealis Convener’s Award for Excellence. It is ostensibly aimed at a child and young adult audience but the complex references are interesting to adults and initially the artwork contained in the picture book may have been aimed towards adults.

The Rabbits contains a narrative that is an allegory of the historical process of Australian colonization, it is told from a “collective” first person perspective by an indigenous voice, from the perspective of imagined anthropomorphic indigenous marsupial possum creatures. The narrative is a “didactic and spare” (Do Rozario 2011 : 25) (instructive and unelaborated) description of a gradual invasion by waves of human like rabbit creatures displacing human like marsupial possum creatures, and the introduction of new species from the anthropomorphic rabbit’s original ecosystem. Significantly the narrative does not narrate a resolution that represents a “cosmic balance” (Do Rozario 2011 : 25), the narrative does not have a happy ending (Do Rozario 2011 : 26), ultimately the story is a narrative of a cosmic imbalance from the perspective of the narrator. The art work by Shaun Tan gives the book much of its resonance, the images elaborate and expand the sparse narrative into ecological and universal dimensions. The images display an exaggerated nightmarish European culture, in angular shapes with imperial red, white and gold colour schemes and the picture books representations of the anthropomorphic marsupial possum indigenous culture, is in curved shapes with earthy colours that strongly evokes the art work of Australian Aborigines. There are clear historical symbols in the picture book and an imagined but recognisably Australian natural environment that is conveyed more clearly through displayed images that the sparse collective first person narrative, “our”, that gives the picture book its universal and ecological context (Do Rozario 2011 : 25).

The Rabbit Ship from The Rabbits 1998

Some of the images are haunting, especially its interpretation of sheep. Sheep are portrayed in an uncanny way as essentially mouths attached to woolly bodies and are associated with the action of voracious chewing, the image of teeth is described by Dianne McGlasson (2013) as being a significant metaphor and uses Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to interpret the images. Abjection means a state of being “cast off” and many of Shaun Tan’s images of childhood contain a state of abjection where the subject is situated as separate from the dominant symbolic order. Kristeva’s theory of abjection has the subject, the abject being traumatically separated from the symbolic order, thus the subject is no longer the subject of that order but is the abjected. The abject complements the superego, which is formed from the dominant discourse, representative of culture, the symbolic order. The abjected is prelanguage before being incorporated into language by the Symbolic order thus is described as being Semiotic, belonging to a preoedipal stage (McGlasson 2013 : 21).

McGlasson (2013) describes symbols as masculine because they are associated with the super ego, a symbolic order developed from a (masculine) dominant discourse and describes the semiotic as maternal because they are counter to the dominant discourse and thus have an abject state. Although this interpretation can be disputed, part of the beauty of art is that it can have different meanings dependant on the interpretation of its audience. There is an uncanny and political content in Shaun Tan’s artwork in The Rabbits that can be subjected to the interpretative orientations of its audience and it is possible that McGlasson (2013) may be, to a degree, right, in the sense that discourse can be contested along various intersections of privilege and gender is one intersection. Uncontentiously the images of teeth in The Rabbits, such as those of the sheep are removed from their normal place (McGlasson 2013 : 23), in the sense they are disproportionately large, over exposed and not associated with a smile display and thus are abject, “objects of horror, revulsion and distaste” (McGlasson 2013 : 23).

The Sheep from The Rabbits 1998

The anthropomorphic marsupial possum creatures are abjected in the picture book in the sense that they are oppressed, exploited and betrayed by the colonizing rabbits, the narrative represents the process of colonization as wrong (McGlasson 2013 : 24). There are multiple representations of process, the colonizing machines & animals engorge, process and eliminate and the text is accompanied by images of stages of a colonization process and the wrongness of these processes are demonstrated by images of the abject and uncanny, such as the images that feature teeth, as agents of abjection.

Similarly, the pictures in the picture book are argued as being abject because they critique the dominant historical discourse. The images in critiquing the process of colonization disturb conventional identity and cultural concepts, disrupting the assumption of degrees of “terra nullis”, not total emptiness, because that the aborigines were originally there is not under dispute, but the historical dominant discourse can be argued to contain the assumption that they weren’t really “using” the land, a psychological “terra nullis” (McGlasson 2013 : 20).  

Bibliography

McGlasson, Dianne. (2013). A Toothy Tale : Themes of Abjection in John Marsden and Shaun Tans Picture Story Book, The Rabbits. In Lion and the Unicorn, Volume 37, Number 1, January 2013. Pages 20-36.

Do Rozario, Rebecca-Anne. (2011). Australia’s Fairy Tales Illustrated in Print : Instances of Indigeneity, Colonization, and Suburbanization. In Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Volume 25, Number 1 (2011). Pages 13-32. Published by Wayne State University Press, Detroit.

Interesting sites

Shaun Tan's site

John Marsden's Home site mostly advertising the "Tomorrow" series of young adult books

Youtube video of Shaun Tan in an interview  "Do you encourage open interpretation of your work?"

Part of a water colour.

Bathroom tiles, an attempt at three dimensional depth.

Really a work in progress, if I continue with this.

Landscape with study of horse skull.

Portrait iteration #4 Final. 

Preliminary sketch of a Bathroom. For watercolour.

Portrait, Iteration #1. Studying shadow on face.
Right side of face is not aligned, and mouth not following slope of face.

Preliminary drawing for a water colour.

Pencil drawing of an interpretation of a Dragon Age Inquisition character, for the aesthetic challenge and discussion of hair styles.

The aesthetics of the armour are derived from designs on Matt Rhodes's blog, a real concept artist.

Piraha & Recursive Statements

It is interesting to observe the features of conversation and ponder its context.

There is a relatively recent description of a culture demonstrating a restriction of communication to the immediacy of experience in the Piraha language and its features challenge linguistic universals proposed by Noam Chomsky and Greenberg. These linguistic universals are interesting because they are built from objective observations about the components of human communication. It is part of an argument that language is able to influence the development of culture, culture being understood as “ways of meaning” (Everett 622 : 2005) and is one that is still being discussed and has been discussed since at least the “Sapir Whorf Hypothesis” in the 1930’s and probably much earlier than that. Its probably not really an even an argument, it's not if it's how.

Piraha is spoken by approximately 450 people living along the Maici river in the Amazona state of Brazil. It is classified as a Muran language and is a recent focus of attention because it is being argued by Everett (2005) as not featuring parts of Joseph Greenberg’s set of linguistic universals, namely counting numerals, colour terms, relative tenses and challenging Chomsky’s proposed universal grammar (Nevins et al 2009) the ability to make recursive statements (Sakel 2011), which is number five on Hocketts design features of human language.

One of the easier to understand differences is the absence of counting terms. It is hard to imagine what not using counting terms would be like, numerical systems are fundamental in our culture, I wonder what local areas of our central nervous system are involved? Piraha does contain terms describing quantities, Everett (623 : 2005) provides examples such as h’oi “small size or amount”, hoi “somewhat larger size or amount” and b’a a gi “cause to come together” which is translated as “many” (Everett 623 : 2005) but numerals do not appear to be used. The Piraha are in a contact with cultures that do use numerals, such as Everetts description of portugese speaking river boat traders, and Piraha “gatekeepers” are using portuguese terms (lexical elements) without counting terms. Also Everett does describe Piraha realizing that counting is important in nonbarter economic relations and describes the subsequent unsuccessful attempt made to learn portuguese counting terms so that they could understand when a fair trade was made (Everett 626 : 2005).  

Counting is fundamental to Western culture, and is probably fundamental to the integration required for civilization and is a predominant component in the experience of modernity and the pragmatic communication of value. Examples that come to mind include childhood songs, such as Danny Kay singing “Inch worm” on episode 316 of the Muppet show, and recent discussions of Archimedes using polygons to calculate pi, the ratio of the diameter to the circumference.

Numbers are used to give abstract quantities to their subjects. In reading a translation by McDevitte & Bohn (1869) Julius Caesar's “The Gallic Wars” one becomes conscious of the characteristic interests of the author, the author (Gaius Julius Caesar) uses numbers regularly, he mentions lists obtained from the camps of the Helvetii, written in Greek, detailing the number of men able to bear arms amongst the Helvetii and their allies (Caesar Gael 3.11). The author (Gaius Julius Caesar) talks about the characteristics of the tribes, it is a pragmatic cultural analysis, focusing on military capabilities and tactics and describes a value that McDevitte & Bohn (1869) have translated as “lust for sovereignty”, which probably describes the view of members of a state system that values power, discipline and organisation and legitimizes slavery, possibly the opposite side of what we would call “the value of autonomy or freedom”.

Numbers are an important feature of Thucydides “The History of the Peloponnesian War” (411 BC) which is considered the earliest attempt at an evidence based history, describing the wars between Sparta and Athens in ancient Greece (431 -404 BC). The smallest tactical unit mentioned by Thucydides is a lochus which is approximately 400 to 500 men, Xenophon used the term to describe 100 and Thucydides regularly uses the number 300 thus term lochus should be taken as the smallest tactical unit.

Differences in numbers or quantity are taken to be one Greenberg's linguistic universals, they manifest in unique nouns, verbs or noun and verb modifiers such as inflection and can be expressed by a numerical system in cultures that have them. The sparsity of ways of describing differences in number in Piraha language challenges this but there are multiple examples of hunter and gatherer populations having no specific number word other than one.

With regards to Colour terms, Piraha are able to distinguish black, white, red, yellow, blue green but do not use“colour terms” as an abstract category. Everett (628 : 2005) goes on to argue that what colour terms and numbers have in common are that they are used to quantify beyond immediate experience.

The absence of recursive statements, which Everett describes as a lack of embedding (628 : 2005) is also taken as an example of the focus of the Piraha language on immediate experience. An example of a recursive statement would be a noun phrase in a noun phrase, or a sentence embedded in a sentence, ie “(Personal pronoun) I was watching the hawk, (relative pronoun) that was watching the dove, that was watching the worm and the worm wiggled away”. The significance of recursion is proposed by Noam Chomsky as being the only trait of human communication that distinguishes it from (non human) “animal communication”. This recursive feature is related to the ability of humans to have insight into their actions.

The significance of the described absence of recursive statements in Piraha is still being discussed. Nevins, Pesetsky & Rodrigues (2009) are challenging Everett’s (2005) interpretation, they argue that the basis for the argument of an absence of recursive statements is due to a speech rule of “one event per utterance” (Nevins et al 363 : 2009). If there is a rule of one event per utterance this does not demonstrate the absence of embedding and necessitate a principle of the immediacy of experience. An example of this is evidence of someone indicating someone else has seen an event, it involves two events, the seeing of and what was seen (Nevins et al 363 : 2009) within a single utterance.

Part of Everett’s reply to this challenge by Nevins, Pesetsky & Rodrigues (2009) is that embedding is more a feature of human consciousness and that languages tend to reflect this. It is possible that the absence of embedding in Piraha language does not mean that it does not occur in Piraha thinking, concepts can make anaphoric or cataphoric references to other concepts, the quote often used is John Brockman's response “Idea’s are built inside of other ideas.” (Brockman 273 : 2013) in Thinking Edited by John Brockman and published by  Harper-Collins. Again this is still being argued about.

From Adam Scherlis (August 2010)

Bibliography

Everett, Daniel. (2005). Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Piraha. In Current Anthropology. Volume 46. Number 4. August –October 2005. Pages 621 -646.

McDevitte, W.A & Bohn, W.S. (1869). Commentaries on the Gallic War. Harper’s New Classical Library, New York : Harper & Brothers, 1869.

Available at http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.html

Nevins, Andrew; Pesetsky, David & Rodrigues, Cilene. (2009). Piraha Exceptionality : A Reassessment. In Language, Volume 85, Number 2. June 2009. Pages 355 -404.

Sakel, Jeanette (2011). Transfer and language contact : the case of Piraha. In the International Journal of Bilingualism. Volume 16. Issue 1. Pages 37 -52.

Notes

Predicate : The part of a sentence that modifies the subject, one of two parts of a sentence. Ie Sentence = Subject + Predicate.

See Zero copula. Subject joined to predicate without overt indication. Feature of some Russian languages, generally only used in current tense, but there may possibly be an exception.

Useful website on the discussion

Recursion and Human Thought . Article published by Edge. @ http://mail.edge.org/conversation/recursion-and-human-thought

A sphinx scribble from paint blotches, scribbles and a coffee stain.