Done (ish)

Hallelujah. Finally sent everything in after a long and frustrating day dealing with a bad internet connection and massive file sizes. At a few minutes to midnight, the countdown for the large file sending service I was using read 2 hours and some; after waiting 2 hours and some it read 1 hour and some, so I went to bed and let it load overnight. I hope everything made it to where it needed to go. There is a lot that I wish we could have captured in the animation, like the more discreet movements of the agents or the objects in the ritual like kero cups and the tills, but I don't have the technical know-how to understand whether that was ever really feasible (or how many more dozens of hours would have been needed to accomplish those tasks). I'd like to continue to fine-tune the ritual model, but perhaps what we need right now is a bit of time to think about it and recharge for next semester. It's been a tremendous learning process and I'm really grateful that I was pushed out of my comfort zone and forced to learn new software and new ways of thinking. This whole thing has encouraged me to think about the way I use different technologies and to recognize their flexibility... almost anything can be done if one has the patience and the chutzpa to go for it.

Final Countdown

This is it. I've been e-mailing with Pengfei, Emily and Diana about coordinating the final put-together, in which the objects and people (grafted with the mo-cap movements) are imported into the CAROSA map, and then the entire animation is carried out and made into a .mov file that I will then edit in iMovie and to which I will add the voiceover/music. The goal is to send the final product in by 4pm Tuesday. It's scary because it feels like there are lots of balls in the air; each person is responsible for crucial steps of the process. Here's to hoping everything goes smoothly. I've got the audio ready to go... with luck, the whole thing will be just under 6 minutes long. One of the biggest issues right now is fixing bugs in the skeleton/mo-cap part of the animation (in other words, ensuring that the agents in the model are performing the actions I did in the mo-cap suit). I'm not a religious person, but if I were, this would be the time to pray. I'll invoke Jediism for now: please oh please, let the force be with us.

Screen capture of the model as is (courtesy of Pengfei Huang):

Almost

It's getting down to the wire. I've been working with Pengfei on creating the right map/grid so that he can more easily code the locations of various activities in the ritual. I've been using the 3D Warehouse to find small objects to use as markers on the map; I even found this great little jagged wall model which I 'exploded' and onto which I added a new texture taken from one of Dr. Erickson's Inca wall images. Sometime early this week, I think the whole group is going to get together to figure out how to finish this thing off once and for all; I'm really looking forward to the moment when it all comes together. In the meantime, I'm recording the voice over in English and looking around for good music to have in the background.

SketchUp Skills

I spent about five hours the other night trying to figure out how to model terrain in SketchUp. I started by doing a very haphazard, ugly triangle method which made the mountain/field look jagged and unrealistic, then I went for the curved terrace look (which was equally unrealistic but more aesthetically pleasing), and then, after watching a few YouTube tutorials, I figured out how to use the sandbox features to create a smoothed mountainous terrain for the field. I will withhold screenshots here so that I have more new material to show for myself in the presentation on Wednesday. After making this discovery (and, in the fervor of epiphany, continued to play around with the model for a looong time), I sent the model to Pengfei, the graduate student that Dr. Badler got involved with the project. I went in to see him the next day to try to transfer the image from Sketchup to Maya and then Maya to Ogre. At the SIG lab, I learned several things:

1. The field surface on which the "agents" will tread must be perfectly flat in the model
2. Newer versions of OGRE are pretty different from older versions
3. How to increase the order of magnitude of the view of the objects in Maya
4. That the model must be made up of triangles to be able to tag coordinates for CAROSA (and that the smooth feature in SketchUp simply conceals the triangles)

I've been in touch with Diana about modeling props and other items for the model. She showed me a screenshot of a kero cup model and a plow, both of which looked amazing. Things are really shaping up.

Mo-Cap

This morning I suited up to do the motion capture for the model of the ploughing ritual. I had written a list of all the discrete movements that might take place during the ritual, from drinking chicha from a kero cup to slicing the throat of a llama, from drunken staggering to rhythmic dancing. It was a process not unlike filming a movie; there are takes, someone yells "action," and sometimes one must do away with inhibitions. A friend who is a DMD major was working in the room where we were doing the motion capture and there were a few embarrassing moments (like when I mimed a man drunkenly urinating).

We are well on our way, I think, to having a really cool model. Brigitte is working on putting together the "schedules" of all the agents participating in the ritual (we will have to cap the total number at 20, which is fine but not quite the crowd I had envisioned); I've been researching and writing the script for the animation as well as writing voicover text for the final product. I'm looking forward to hearing Bauer's responses to my questions. Perhaps he will be able to clear up some of the remaining confusions about the ritual, particularly regarding the two different fields and the observation of the sun on the day of the ritual.

Re-Change of Plans

We're back to focusing on the ploughing ritual (though still weaving in the origin myth). I spent the last three and a half hours searching through primary source documents (thank you eHRAF) trying to find an answer to the question of whether the ritual took place at Sausero, Collcampata, or both. From what I can tell, Sausero tends to be associated with Mama Huaco, and the maize from this field is said to be made into chicha for the cult of Mama Huaco. Collcampata, on the other hand, seems to be associated more with Manco Capac and the Sun. There is a version of the origin myth in which Manco Capac is said to adorn himself with silver and gold so that the people on distant mountains can see him glimmering and believe that he is the son of the Sun. I think we can say, then, that Sausero and Collcampata are separate but part of the same ritual; both are included in various account that mention that it is the first plouhing, and I found one account this morning (it referenced the harvest ritual but suggests continuity with the planting) that says that the ceremony started at Sausero and moved to fields of other deities, including Collcampata/the sun. We're getting closer!

Change of Plans

Brigitte and I just met to discuss our project and decided to change our focus slightly. Rather than trying to piece together "factual" information about how the sowing ritual and the anti-zenith relate and coming up with one quasi-definitive rendering of events, we will focus on the origin myth of Mama Huaco and Manco Capac, which will, we think, offer us more interpretive wiggle-room. If we focus on modeling our interpretation of the myth (which is, after all, a myth) based on various accounts and oral histories, we can still insert elements of the corn planting ritual as they relate to the first sowing by Mama Huaco and Manco Capac and discuss Mama Huaco's journey along the ceque/sight line of Quispicancha in relation to the anti-zenith sunset observation on August 18th as described by Zuidema.

Update: Ritual Confusion

As I have mentioned in class, I've been trying to come up with an account of the first corn planting ritual of the season, which seems to occur on August 18, the day of the anti-zenith. Bauer's account has the Inca king with four noblemen and their wives sewing seeds in the field of Sausero, which is near the (long-gone) Arco Punto and the fields in which Mama Huaco and Manco Capac were alleged to have sewn the first seed after defeating the jungle people. He says that they sing haylli (war songs) to celebrate their triumph over the earth, and a white llama with gold adornments is prepared in the center of the field for sacrifice. Guinea pigs are also sacrificed, according to Bauer's piecing together of stories, and the commoners all assemble and watch while everything is happening. Onlookers drink and pour chicha throughout the ritual. Bauer does not discuss the cosmological significance of this date in August; he does not mention the anti-zenith, as Zuidema was quick to point out, and he does not discuss the viewing of the sunset at Quispicancha from the Ushnu in the plaza or the ritual procession along the ceque that leads to Quispicancha (which Mama Huaco apparently traversed long ago). Zuidema also mentioned the Priests of the Sun (children of thunder), as well as the fact that the ritual took place on a field that was not intended for true agriculture.

I am attempting to reconcile these two very different conceptions of the ritual, from Zuidema's intensly astronomical/cosmological, ceque-oriented account to Bauer's ceremony-oriented, war-over-nature account. Brigitte and I are teaming up to get to the bottom of this (with Prof. Erickson's help), and I fear that we will either have to pick one account and stick to it (and accept that we are missing parts of the story), try to mesh multiple stories (at the expense of losing some factuality), or find a new ritual to study that has a better written record from which to draw information.

Corn(y)

I just read Bauer's account of the corn plowing ritual and the origin myth of Manco Capac and Mama Huaco, after which I read Zuidema's account of the Capac Raymi Camay Quilla feast. I was under the impression that both scholars would be describing the same ritual(s), but it seems like Bauer and Zuidema are talking about completely separate things. Perhaps Bauer just isn't getting into the astronomical specifics, but in Zuidema's telling there's little about corn, which is the essence of Bauer's piece. Either my expectations were false or my understanding is dim. Either way, I think that the plowing ritual sounds like something that would be really cool to model. We could capture the movement of plowing with motion capture/Maya, research/reproduce the sounds of the hailis being sung, model the 600 nobles lined up and the llamas and guinea pigs sacrificed, recreate/model the Arco Punto and the fields of Huanaypata and Sausero, reconstruct the ceremonial tunics depicted in the illustrations in Bauer, and more. We could even include a tutorial on chicha and perhaps link to/embed the video I found of the chew-and-spit process (on BoingBoing) or reconstruct the making of chicha ourselves.

With a little clarification on the compatibility/incompatibility of the Bauer/Zuidema discussions of the ritual, I think I'll be on the way to getting started producing the actual content for our final project!

Biography and Project Interest Statements

BIO I enter ANTH258: Visualizing/Peopling the Past as a Cultural Anthropology major with minors in Science, Technology and Society and Theater Arts. My research foci over the past few years have been performativity and the anthropological significance of theater, semiotics and space, the anthropology of modern/postmodern/global cities, and the cultural impact of new technologies, particularly new media. I have tended towards the examination of contemporary cultures, so this project encourages relatively new modes of analysis and research for me (read: my research subjects are not usually dead). My interest in performance comes from my experience in theater, film and drumming; in theater, I have spent a lot of time on both sides of the curtain doing technical work (including using Sketch-Up as a designing tool for sets) as well as acting. I enjoy the methodology of cultural anthropology (participant observation, interviewing, surveying), which I had the opportunity to employ over the summer in conducting ethnographic fieldwork for my thesis on the effects/implications of the experimentation with small media by big media as a means of coping with uncertainty in the field of journalism in the age of Web 2.0. I speak Spanish and would often rather decode theoretical texts than read a novel. With this background, I hope that I will be able to add value to our final project as an observer, analyzer and transposer (or translator) of performative and technological phenomena past and present.

PROJECT INTEREST Having been influenced and informed by the work of Lawrence Coben, I am interested in looking at the way specific huaca sites and architectural loci of ritual and theatrical performance in and around Cuzco transmitted semiotic cues to and guided the activities of the people, helping maintain order and strengthen the Inca empire. The spatial configuration of the huacas, both in their grand schematic placement within the ceque system and as individual sites, has multiple functions. The theatrics enacted about, within and around these sites, like the structures themselves, convey messages that carry meanings, which are decoded and interpreted by the citizens of the empire. I hope to examine one or two specific rituals that are situated within specific sites along the ceque system, paying special attention to the symbolic/semiotic messages that are constructed there and the interpretations that can be drawn from them. While my technical capabilities are not nearly as developed as my analytical/theoretical capabilities, I would like to contribute to the visual reconstruction of the sites using Sketch-Up and perhaps even Maya (albeit if only elementarily). I am particularly interested in collaborating with a technically gifted member of the class to reconstruct and bring to life some of the physical movements enacted in rituals, utilizing the motion capture technologies available to us through Penn/Digital Media Design department. As Coben discusses in his brief article about digital reconstruction, the drama that results from the combination of the spatial features of the environment and the performance of the ritual itself is heightened by the interplay of the two and carries important meanings for the empire. The more impressive these spectacles are, the more impact they have on the society at large. If there’s time, it might be interesting to examine present-day rituals in light of the rituals of the past (using other media such as video of recent rituals or interviews of people who have taken part) and chronologically superimpose layers of ritual over specific huacas or places along the ceque system.

Capac Hucha

I am at once viscerally unsettled and strangely captivated by McEwan and van de Guchte's description of the capac hucha ritual in "Ancestral Time and Sacred Space in Inca State Ritual." The image on page 362 of a petrified mummy of a child huddled in blankets, wearing ribbons/adornments in his hair and surrounded by ceremonial artifacts, is particularly disturbing yet feeds my scopophilia. The image seems almost like a violation, the flipside of something like CNN's turning away of the camera 'out of respect' when suspected weather balloon boy was about to make impact. But this reaction is culturally inflected; the portrayal of a dead child might be inappropriate and distasteful to us, but for the Inca the deaths of these children were not tragedies but noble and important sacrifices. While the technologies of representation were obviously limited for the Inca, I wonder what they would have thought of an image like the one in McEwan and van de Guchte.

I wonder how I might incorporate the capac hucha ritual into my final project. The burials themselves seem too detailed for my technical capabilities; perhaps I could look through the records of burials and find one that is near a suspected huaca site and model that. I'm apprehensive about mapping out all the ceques and the huaca sites along them; I'd rather focus on one smaller thing that I could model in SketchUp. I'm interested in learning how to model irregular terrain and better use textures in addition to just becoming more proficient in the program. I'll spend hours and hours working in SketchUp and have no idea that so much time has passed. It's a complete departure from all the other work I normally do and I really relish the opportunity to incorporate it into the project.

Project Thoughts

After reading Protzen's "Inca Stonemasonry" piece, I was thinking that it would be really cool to do some sort of video demonstration of one of the techniques the Inca used in constructing their buildings or making their day-to-day objects... perhaps not stonemasonry (given our lack of indigenous rock and, most likely, my lack of the requisite strength), but maybe something else like thatching. We could post the video along with renderings of the buildings/features/objects that were made using that technique.

It's a lofty project, I suppose, but I think using multiple forms of media on the website we create will make it more interesting and unique. In doing some preliminary work on Assignment 3, I came across a fantastic kids' website about a farmstead in what is now West Virginia. The site's use of multimedia was really spectacular, albeit a little cheesy... I'd love to analyze the site for the assignment. As silly as it is, I think the creators did a wonderful job of presenting a lot of information about archaeology in a very accessible and understandable way, as well as making the site interactive and fun.

Trent de Boer

"The Archaeological Zine Shovel Bum" by Trent de Boer

• fanzine, usually defined as 'magazine for fans,' for de Boer became a fanatic magazine
• started in 1997, while doing CRM (cultural resource management) with wife Betty at Oachita National Forest in Arkansas
• Shovel Bum = " a periodical geared toward fanatical archaeological field technicians"
• inspired by Porcellino's King-Cat and Other Stories to write "comix" (comics for adults) about the day-to-day life of the CRM archaeologist
• target audience in the beginning: family and friends
• at the start, the fanzine was about methods, reasons for methods, and about dispelling stereotypes about archaeology (pyramids, fossils and mummies) by explaining things like orienteering and site recordation
• the use of humor was an important element in all the comix
• Shovel Bum was a way for de Boer to show people the joys of being an archaeologist
• with more popularity, Shovel Bum became about the lifestyle of the archaeologist and incorporated stories and content from other archaeologists
• zine structured by themes: food, bad motels, field vehicles, e.g.
• miscellaneous content made it into the zines as well: recipes, letters to the editor, games, poetry
• because the CRM community is small, the zine helps bring members together and help others feel like a part of the community
• CRM sites = Shovel Bum reunions
• collection of Shovel Bum comix published by AltaMira Press
• at the end of the article, de Boer solicits submissions/contributions to Shovel Bum: even YOU can be a shovel bum...

The Timeless Vision of Teotihuacan

The article I chose to write about for my National Geographic critique, "The Timeless Vision of Teotihuacan" (Vol. 188, No. 6), skirts the line between actualizing Gero and Root's harsh characterization of the magazine's underlying ideologies and debunking it. As I promised in a footnote of my essay, I will include some scans from the article here so that they may be viewed at a higher resolution. What Gero and Root have gleaned from a careful, systematic reading of National Geographic lies much deeper than an average reader will venture, and, while we might too examine our articles critically and find glimpses of what Gero and Root were talking about, we are not the typical audience.

Nonetheless, here are the pictures.

National Geographic Through the Ages

I asked my dad to send me a random sample of old National Geographics from our collection at home. My grandfather started collecting them when he was in his twenties and my dad has continued the tradition: there are three or four bookshelves devoted entirely to National Geographic at our house in Boston.

Here are some scans of covers from some of the earlier issues he sent. It is interesting to note the progression in contents, from more America-centric at the beginning to more other-world-centric later on, as well as the change in the layout of the cover, from just a hand-drawn frame to a photo with the frame to a photo with just a hint of the frame at the top. The price has, unsurprisingly, changed too, from "$8.00 a year/$1.00 a copy" to $15 for a subscription today.

(Also, there's a long story on cats in the 1964 issue (Vol. 125, No. 4), complete with adorable photographs of kittens. Don't quite know what to make of that one.)

1959


1964


1970


And for the animal lovers out there:

Mark Sorrell

The Artist and Reconstruction by Mark Sorrell

• something's being 'factual' is more convincing when there's a personality behind it
• importance of being correct while being artistic
• archaeology deals with people in their environment: humanity
• paintings feature actors; people not just for scale
• phases of archeology:

1. excavation
2. report
3. reconstruction

• sometimes jargon of reports serves as barrier/"smoke screen"
• archeologist's plans are more helpful with contours
• models, in the end, just look like models
• full-scale replication of site can be cool
• "artist's approach to actuality is far removed from the popular photographic aspect of appearances" (23)
• importance of the surrounding landscape of a site; good for artist to walk around site
• importance of scale: too large is unreal
• prefers "limited color"
• title of work shouldn't include "reconstruction of..."
• sees his work as making a "valuable contribution to the search for truth about the past" (24)
• finally, thanks the "kind" and "helpful" archaeologists he's worked with

Sorrell's paintings:

• gloomier, darker colors
• balances foreground with background, gives a realistic and impressive sense of scale
• brings natural elements of paintings to life: wind-swept trees, gnarled/fallen branches

Martin Pate

I just finished putting together a few slides for our brief presentations tomorrow. Martin Pate's artwork for the National Park Service (and others) blends factual detail with lively and attention-getting images (as well as spans a wide range of historical -- and prehistorical -- periods); in his work, Pate must balance the need for accuracy (as determined by the nature and amount of evidence) and his standards and techniques of artistry while fulfilling the goals of educating and exciting the public. I found that there were a few pieces of information missing from Pate's account of his process and the genesis of his works, which I will raise in tomorrow's talk.

For now, here are a few of Pate's paintings:














Ft. Bragg, North Carolina














"Carolina Potters"

Tiwanaku Books

I finally received the two books on the Tiwanaku that I ordered used through Amazon. They are both really cool; one, "Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca" by Margaret Young-Sánchez is almost like a coffee table book (it's huge) and has big glossy photographs of artifacts, textiles, architectural features and the landscape. The other, "The Tiwanaku" by Alan L. Kolata is a normal-sized book but also has images and maps, including a few groundplans that might be useful. Hopefully after looking through them more closely I'll have a good sense of what I want to do for the final project.

Ollantaytambo

I decided to play around with the idea of "building up" from an archaeological ground plan. This is my attempt at recreating the kancha at Ollantaytambo.

The auto-snap to edges and axes makes drawing irregular shapes really annoying; thus, I had a little trouble with precision. I'm sure there's a faster way to do some of the things I did (like coloring every face with that dark brown color)... eventually I'll figure it out. I didn't get around to putting roofs on everything, so: To be continued...

Here's the ground plan from the "Inca Architecture" intro by Protzen:














And here's my drawing:

Stories

Christine Finn's likening of journalists to archaeologists -- and her analysis of how they differ -- exposes the shortcomings of archaeologists vis-a-vis the presentation of findings and telling of narratives for public audiences. Some "borrowing" is in order, she says; archaeologists, typically concerned with communicating with colleagues in the academy, are not so good at the laymen stuff. If archeologists could tell more engaging stories -- the kind that journalists are known for -- they might be able to gain a mainstream following that not only popularizes archeology but popularizes the true archaeology. As last week's readings demonstrate, the archaeologists of popular media are typically not the real deal. Sabloff's article echoes Finn's assertion that better storytelling can help develop a more accurate and instructive understanding of archaeology among the public. Archeologists have important roles to play in the business of looking back to look forward. But as the National Geographic piece warns, attempts to bring archeology into mainstream culture (well-intentioned attempts as they may be) can carry underlying social, political and nationalistic biases. While the National Geographic article is perhaps overly admonishing, it does present some of the dangers of formulating images and stories of the past from a single point of view. Gero and Root argue that National Geographic portrays archeology "...as an enterprise [that] legitimizes the hegemony of Western culture and Western imperialism and imposes a congruent view onto the past" (p. 35); like in Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, the protagonists of the stories, the settings, the background actors, and the props construct a certain image of the past. Journalists, movie directors, photographers and the archeologists themselves must avoid imposing ethnocentric or biased points of view and, as Pyburn calls for, maintain strict ethical standards. Clarity of method, acknowledgment of baggage and the shade of one's spectacles, and careful outlining of goals help make a responsible archaeologist. It all comes down to stories: what makes the cut and what doesn't, how they're told, for whom they're told, where they're told and when.

And the movie is...

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)






















Archaeology and Woody Allen... what more could one ask for?

Here's a trailer, courtesy of nytimes.com

Archaeologists and Popular Culture, Project Beginnings

The readings for this week take up conceptions of archaeologists in popular culture historically, anecdotally, statistically and, even, psychologically (though I find the Freudian/oedipal phallus analysis in “Metaphors We Dig By” a little hard to buy). Most of the literature concludes that there are several stereotypes of archeologists – ranging from the hairy-chinned academician to the hairy-chested hero – that spring into the collective imagination. These archetypes are perpetuated by (and in some cases find their origins on) the silver screen. The former (the hairy-chinned), regrettably, seem closer to the truth, leaving the Indiana Joneses to the magnificence, fantasy and fiction of the movies. Unsurprisingly, the occult also finds its place among these fantastical imaginings. That the Lara Crofts and Indiana Joneses are generally unrealistic figures doesn’t really matter, though: they portray archeology in an overwhelmingly positive, albeit distorted, light. The A, D, R and C themes put forth by Holtorf in “Popular Culture and Archaeology” are anything but disparaging. The only unfortunate emphasis in these accounts is that the process of archeology is more important – and certainly more fun – than the end result. It seems like our class will do its part to dispel these kinds of beliefs: the models, renderings, web pages and animations we will create seem like pretty cool end results to me.

I spent an hour or so reviewing Google SketchUp. I’ve used it in the past for set designs and mock-ups of dorm rooms. I’m looking forward to learning how to use this program more efficiently and to do more complicated renderings. I played around with the contour tools, but still don’t have a good understanding of how it actually works.

I’ve started thinking about the kinds of things I’d most like to do for the final project. I’ve been studying the use of technology, media and communications in the 21st century; I wonder how I might translate that to our field site. The way people use technologies might manifest in the project as some sort of examination of tools, or animating the use of a particular tool. It would be cool to model how a particular technology was incorporated into daily life in Cuzco. I also enjoy modeling architectural features; perhaps a static representation is more in line with my technological capabilities.