00:00.00 archpodnet All right, go ahead. 00:03.34 Alan Well hello out there is podcast lan this is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel back for segment 2 of the rock art podcast episode 73 and I'm with tres trace Fleeman Garcia who's in a really ah interdisciplinary scholar. But the Oregon Institute for creative research talking about the subject of semiotics and I'm sure that many of you had never heard of that subject or know much about it I have only recently delved superficially in that topic but find it to be very very relevant. And very interesting in the study of rock art. So I think you're going to hear some things that are a bit revel revelatory trace. Are you there? Great we began talking in the first segment about something that you're calling cognitive semiotics. 00:47.48 Trace Fleeman Garcia Yes I am. 01:00.17 Alan Perhaps talk a bit about that. Would you. 01:00.36 Trace Fleeman Garcia So as I had mentioned in the earlier segment um semiotics has this very deep history with cognition and with psychology and in particular psychoanalysis. Um, with. Um, in the past fifty years um a newer discipline of semiotics or biosemiotics has kind of appeared on the stage. Um I myself am a member of the international society for biosemiotics and just this last year um I was presenting research at their annual um conference. Um. And um, ultimately biosemiotics is is considered to be a study of the life of science and the signs of life. Um, as once again I had mentioned before um and has a deeper relationship with the fields of biology and in particular Neurology. Um, than semniontics kind of had in the past although ah, many would argue that biosemiotic starts actually in the late Nineteenth century. Um with um oshkul and other ah other researchers in biology. Um and ethology. Um not to be confused with. Ethnology um, but ethology. Um the notion of behavior. Um, the study of behavior. Um, so within so within cognitive semiotics are these. 02:17.14 Alan Yes, now go ahead. Please. 02:28.36 Trace Fleeman Garcia New and interesting ideas about how to apply the methods and theory of semiotics to studying things like neurons. But also um, the notion more widely of meaning making within the body. Um, which includes things like the analysis of. Dna and rna as codes as semionic codes. Um so semionics would can. 02:49.13 Alan And and and and and and in rock art if I if I try to drill down to certain aspects that I I myself and others perhaps have thought about or used or maybe not um, there's certain elements certain elements certain. Designs and symbols that at least to us I think elicit as you call it emotions or feelings or affect sometimes they're surprise right? and sometimes they're terror. 03:22.39 Trace Fleeman Garcia This is. 03:28.80 Alan And other times it's it's almost like staring or riveting attention. Okay, so ah, one of those that are cross-cultural that seem to appear regularly on what I call Supramundane Beings or. 03:33.97 Trace Fleeman Garcia Move. 03:47.55 Alan You can call them shamanistic ancestor deities or any kind of other figure you want these are full front facing numinous creatures right? that have concentric circle faces and this concentric circle face. Um, is ah you know a bit of a bull's-eye. But when one sees it as as my colleague has reminded me although we can't see 2 eyes. We can certainly see one eye. So it's ah it's it's we know it's alive. We know it's something that is actually a being of sort and it rivets 1 ne's attention almost in a hypnotic way and it it. It almost opens one's mind to a bit of mystery How's that you. 04:41.65 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, yes I have um and I think that semi up semionics has I think a lot to offer the systematic study of of rock art and as we've talked about um there is already a a crossover. 04:44.49 Alan You've seen these haven't you trace? Yeah, so with what what's What's what you? yeah, please go right ahead. I'm sorry. 05:01.10 Trace Fleeman Garcia Of Semiotic rhetoric um to anthropology into archeology. Um, we talk about indexical animals and um, um, why rock art is very ripe for semiotic discussion is very simple. It's because rock art is obviously um, a process of meaning making. 05:06.12 Alan Moving. 05:20.42 Trace Fleeman Garcia And I think that um, that makes it um, already within the within the discipline of semiontics. It's already a semionic endeavor to make ah rock art. Um, and when we talk about affect um semiiotics Semiotics also provides us. Um. With a broader model for how we actually do the analysis of those things like affect um other signifiers within rock art might not only be the visual or the or the um or yes or the um, um, but also. 05:52.63 Alan Emotional. 05:59.25 Trace Fleeman Garcia Might have to do with things like position and um even from the field of archaeo astronomy um with things like how light reflects off of them during different types of of the year those are all things that hold significant meaning and those are indeed signed. Um when signed when um. 06:09.10 Alan Yes, Yes, oh yeah, yeah. 06:18.33 Trace Fleeman Garcia And those um having a very solid model for um, recognizing and analyzing those signs within archeological Contexts I think is what semiotics has to offer um rock art in particular. 06:31.50 Alan Yeah, what was interesting I just had an interview not too long ago with a gentleman who's an archeologist who published a book and did a bunch of descriptor analysis and and consideration. For the indigenous cultures that are the the farthest middle America or Middle Middle latin american and Northern South america and they're men and they're manufactured from gold or this green jadite and he said something that is absolutely stuck with me. Tremendously and he said you know those are both stones and these are objects that are obviously have meaning and are ritual or or symbolic and ceremonial objects. But they're very similar in form in the sense that one must polish them. To a high level and they glisten in the sun. They're preserved and they radiate light and that obviously has a very significant communication or message to be made relating to power and I said wow. 07:42.90 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um. 07:48.40 Alan That that is rather interesting and that even has relevance for rock art because some of the earliest rock art is called Great basin carved abstract and it looks like the artist hads went to town in almost making sculptures on the rocks. Embedding ah almost a 3 dimensional convexity and concavity to these artistic images that are abstract in to the rocks and that to me is fascinating. Maybe you could talk. 08:19.24 Trace Fleeman Garcia So yes, so these the way semionics can help to analyze the way that these different signs um not necessarily just the visual signs but signs more broadly, um, things like material. And and place and location and time and how they fit together in into these strings. Um, and they fit together within a particular grammar within a particular syntax. Um, and it's the these. Um Sosore I believe was the one who. 08:47.99 Alan Yes, yes. 08:56.93 Trace Fleeman Garcia Noted that signs are not simply like um their value is not qualitative but more or not quantitative but more qualitative that he um he likened it to every piece on a chessboard. It relates to each and one next to it. And only in the context of how they relate to each other can the actual value of the pieces be Understood. Um. 09:20.88 Alan Wow, That's that's rather sophisticated complicated and and endlessly engaging and interesting to have said something like that. It's rather it's amazing actually and and I think it's very prescient in the way that I've I've begun to. 09:31.96 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um. 09:39.36 Alan Understand these images and these indexical animals and these icons that go on for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years and become you know, very central to the cosmological nexus and the religious metaphors of. 09:59.20 Trace Fleeman Garcia And Semiotics doesn't isn't um isn't simply um, consigned to the to visual and non-linguistic metaphors. It can also be applied to um, signs as they come up in. 09:59.22 Alan People. 10:18.32 Trace Fleeman Garcia Literature and in particular ethnographic records um in in ethnographic records and semiotics can act as a bridge between those different disciplines um to elucidate those codes as we would say in semiotics. Um. 10:20.34 Alan Yes. 10:27.65 Alan So I would think they they would relate back to sort of material culture and ethnographic you know, elements and patterns and habits and and ceremonies and and rituals and all all the various sundry things that cultures do and process am I correct. 10:36.21 Trace Fleeman Garcia Mm. 10:44.22 Trace Fleeman Garcia Absolutely um so for semiotics. Um, you could say that there for semiontics there is no hard boundary between what what what 1 might say is the immaterial realm and the material realm. 11:00.29 Alan Okay. 11:02.32 Trace Fleeman Garcia That even even objects um are rife and actually overflowing with meaning um. 11:06.60 Alan So let me so let me let me yeah, throw something at you because I we did use this I think in one of our articles that I found so interesting and some somehow innovative and I'm sure you'll have something to say about this? Um, ah, ah. I guess a scientist decided to share and I think this was particular photographs or images of some of the most ancient sculptures that we've ever found you know forty fifty thousand years ago and showed them. Some of these venus figures and the the famous lion man or lionhead and then he asked a series of people who are professional actors and actresses to mimic the postures. Gestures the the physicality of these sculptures and clear their minds and then share with with them. What what their body and their mind is telling them about these particular. Sculptures and it was interesting to see when you talk about affect and ideas and and emotions each one had a different way of sort of posturing their sculptures as whether sad or open or or. You know, optimistic or engaged they were. They had different elements that they discerned from just taking those postures fascinating. Ah. 12:52.51 Trace Fleeman Garcia That's absolutely wonderful I Definitely would be interested in reading more on that. 12:54.51 Alan Yeah, but I but I think that has something to do with our discussion today doesn't it. 12:59.45 Trace Fleeman Garcia Absolutely um in that notion of gesture in art um to bring this back around to talk about rock art once again or petroglyphs. Um, there are um, there is a very famous yo catch. 13:09.30 Alan Um, yeah, yes. 13:18.12 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, panel um up on the Tooulley River reservation in to Larry County um um, and this this huge panel. Um, that has been a lot. There's been a lot of speculation about it. Um, and a lot of respeculation about it ethnographic records from. 13:23.40 Alan Correct. 13:37.31 Trace Fleeman Garcia Late eighteen hundreds don't seem to match up with those from later years from um, after that but 1 of the more interesting analyses I see all with it is um, there's this huge um there is this huge um figure on it. 13:38.56 Alan The. 13:51.83 Alan Central being. 13:55.41 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, which some later researchers have argued is a mythological figure a a hairy man or a wild man figure whereas some earlier and some more critical scholars later who are critiquing this incoming interpretation. Um, interpret it as a grizzly Bear. Um. But very particularly I Um, in particular I noticed that these earlier and more critical researchers um identified the gesture that the figure is making as a gesture in Yokat's culture. One of negation. Um a linguistic kind of like a shake of the head. Um. 14:27.71 Alan 1 of negation. 14:33.53 Alan A. 14:33.60 Trace Fleeman Garcia 1 of negation. Yes, um, and that these ways that these gestures um how how they are that they again are there is ah with the analysis of literature different linguistic groups have different ways of um. To very succinctly call it body language they have different ways of doing body language. Um, and um, these gestures can be seen in in rock art. Not just rock art but any form of figurate of art. Um, and the way that they work as science is preserved. 15:06.32 Alan Exactly so let's um, close out this second segment and move into the next one maybe talking a bit about these gestures and the rock art images see in the flip flop gang.