00:00.00 archpodnet All right, go ahead. Okay. 00:00.00 Alan This is Dr. Allen hey podcasters out there. This is Dr Alan Garfinkel your interviewer and host for the rock art podcast and we have trace fleman Garcia. A interdisciplinary scholar with the Oregon Institute for creative research talking about signs and meanings of signs and the study of semiotics trace. It's been an interesting interaction hasn't it. Are you there? Yes, a very engaging and broad broad ranging discussion. Let's continue this discussion a little bit on the area of gestures and I have to bring up an article by yeah. 00:38.88 Trace Fleeman Garcia And I definitely would say so. 00:53.75 Alan Meringer Mar I N G are who the only one I've ever seen that takes special notice of the recurring gestures that occur on rock art throughout the ages and he packages that into a terminology called. Aurance a D O A N T S and includes a package of supplication surrender prayer beneficence all with that in much more and I've I've had a fantastically interesting you know, sort of interlude thinking about that. I'm of the catholic faith and when I go into pray on Sundays part of liturgy is when individuals raise their hands towards the sky and this seems to be a almost a universal gesture. Ah I don't know if it's supplication but it's ah asking for connection from the divine to the terrestrial or looking for some sort of connection to the supernatural realm and I find that to be rather rather interesting. Um, that particular gesture is found actually throughout the great mural rock art of Baja California where many in fact most of those large even life figures. But are painted on rock shelters in what's called the great mural rock art tradition have their hands thrust towards the sky. What would you think about that. Ah trace. 02:45.28 Trace Fleeman Garcia Well um, definitely gestures have our signs. Um I've talked a lot about signs in these 3 segments but I don't think I've really defined it well enough um in order to speak about things like gestures. So just very quickly I will say that from both um firm berto echo who is a. 03:04.70 Alan E. 03:04.88 Trace Fleeman Garcia Great famous novelist and also um, literally wrote the book on semiotics. Ah um, um, he defines a sign as anything that can be used to lie. Um the classical definition of the sign from Sasor is um, is that anything that stands for something else, but for a borto echo a better. 03:17.14 Alan Right. 03:24.19 Trace Fleeman Garcia Definition of that is anything that can be used to lie. Um, so um, anything any sign process or meaning making process is um, liable to be analyzed from the framework from the methods of semiotics and that includes a gesture and gestural um language is gestural. Codes again as we would say in semiotics ah occur very broadly. Um and in regards to the liturgy that you bring up. Um I think that um this kind of this language of gestures is very beautifully illustrated in the sign of the cross. 03:56.91 Alan E e. 04:02.25 Trace Fleeman Garcia As a gesture. Um and it's not simply It's not simply ah, 1 gesture of 1 sign but indeed a whole complex of signs that relate to other signs. Um, how it's done with the right hand because Jesus sits at the right hand of the father and how it um. Also acts as a performance as a as a participation in the major mysteries of the church. Um, so gestures are these very complex things and they indeed um act within their own grammar within their own syntax. Um. What part of where where they and um and it's communicated in signs and different um values of the signs like um like you mentioned in this rock heart of these these characters these figures reaching towards the sky. Um. So when when we see a character reaching towards the sky there are other signs that can be dug out of it. Um, the upward direction is its own sign. Um it. It refers to something. Um, it's always a tricky there. There's a there's a notion of intention. 05:07.47 Alan E. 05:13.60 Trace Fleeman Garcia Signs But what but because everything things are overflowing with meaning in semionics. It can be tricky to kind of um to kind of um. 05:18.17 Alan You can't You can't narrow cast a sign you can't you can't pinpoint or say precisely. What a particular signite mean because it is such a package of many meanings all intertwined or impricated as as we've said so. 05:37.64 Trace Fleeman Garcia And. 05:37.98 Alan Am I correct in sort of assessing that. 05:42.98 Trace Fleeman Garcia No, you're absolutely correct. Um, semiotics can be considered in a certain sense a process philosophy that instead of looking at things as um, these static objects rather it's It's a study of of sign or semiosis. In fact, Umorto Echo has a ah deep critique of this notion of semiotics that um that it is um ah the analysis of solid objects of these things that don't change but instead moves it towards an analysis of semiosis. So with this process of of rock art creation. 06:05.93 Alan Oh right. 06:19.51 Trace Fleeman Garcia There is this the obvious process We see the process of making rock art and interpreting rock art within these particular cultures. But there's also wider processes at hand Um, including the process the meaning making process that is interpretation. Um, and it is interpretation. Um from archaeology. 06:33.91 Alan Right? right? And and. 06:38.76 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, and archeology itself in a certain sense is a semiotic practice it it it it? um. 06:47.77 Alan So when we see a panel of rock art elements together in ah in a clustered sphere. There could be many meanings embedded in that conflation of images. Correct. Yeah. 07:08.22 Trace Fleeman Garcia Many readings many many interpretations that can be read from those? Um, although um, that does not mean that semion. Ah semiotic analysis is not fruitful to the studied of the past. Um. Archeology in ah in a very pre-modern sense as the study of the past the study of the Artica in Greek you know the basis. Um, um, because with ethnographic records and mythological ones for things that you know we have we have a very we have a nice wealth of. 07:29.30 Alan Right. 07:46.18 Trace Fleeman Garcia Of sources in Mesoamerica for iconographic analysis of of rock art and art more generally those gesturesters and things we have and then we have linguistic elements. Um, how we um, those gestures generally um, can be tied to and how they work tied to linguistic groups. Um, that is spoken lual groups. Um that the sign for negation in yokoch speaking cultures um can be seen in the rock art of the yokkach. So that um, that actually very easily can help one. Ah. 08:19.39 Alan And and exactly so for for instance, as an example, we have these anthropomorphic figures larger than life and they are displayed in a full front facing static numinous posture and that's how they're. 08:21.80 Trace Fleeman Garcia See what the most likely candidate for who created the rock are or what meaning it might have um. 08:38.46 Alan Displayed The animals are so are always displayed from the side or in Portrait in tremendous vital action poses. They are just running at an incredible speed. Out of those rock shelters and up towards the celestial realm and so that that gives one pause for consideration does it not. 09:08.21 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, so you've already you've already um are um, crossing over into a very so classical form of semionic analysis and that is the the analysis of binary oppositions. 09:19.90 Alan Yes. 09:25.69 Alan Absolutely absolutely. 09:25.70 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, for a lot for a lot of structural anthropologists who again have these deep influences from semiotics. Um these meaning-making systems are their most their most basic building blocks are these binary oppositions and you can identify binary oppositions and for um. 1 of the most famous semiotic folklorists. Um, he developed his name is Grius Grima Screamus I think it's grima. Um, but he prepared this. He prepared this this model this um this what he calls a semiontic square or just a grima square um for him which is. 09:47.13 Alan E. 10:04.66 Trace Fleeman Garcia A way of analyzing these binary oppositions. Um through this what she defines as the contrary relationship so we have good versus Evil Um, then you have negation or contradictory relationship which is not good or not evil and then um. 10:06.37 Alan E. 10:23.65 Trace Fleeman Garcia And then implication so not good would imply not or not good implies. Evil Um, even if those things those signs are not equivalent and then with these wider this wider Taxonomy one can start to um, Classify. Signs and characters and icons. Um on this this map of meaning. Um, it's a way of formalizing and modeling and and ah semiotic. Absolutely yes. 10:48.00 Alan It's sort of it's sort of a car. It's instead of a cartography of the mind isn't it. Yeah and I just came up with that. But I'm sure it's been used before but but you know on some of these rock art panels and some of these pictographs and other things. Ah, when you study them and you study the cultures. Occasionally, you get an overwhelming Sense. You know what? the Artisan was trying to communicate as an example, there's historic paintings that are. Related to the ghost dance and what I found is both the colors and the spatiality of these pictographs mirror sort of the cosmological Realm The religious metaphors. That Ah, these indigenous cultures had both with color and space so that the the most ethereal and sacred figures are white and they're up in the heavens and then the mid-level figures. Of course are in red and those are terrestrial or human and some of the worst or some of the most you know what would you call it the the underworld or netherworld figures are in black. So it's It's rather transparent. 12:03.57 Trace Fleeman Garcia Mm. 12:21.28 Trace Fleeman Garcia Eating. 12:22.60 Alan But they're trying to tell you you you understand. 12:27.88 Trace Fleeman Garcia Ah, yes, um, so there are for sosore he defines 2 different types of linguistic analysis and he applies these to semiotics as well because for him semiotics is general linguistics um he and you may be familiar with these terms of a synchronic. 12:44.58 Alan Okay. 12:47.55 Trace Fleeman Garcia Analysis and a diachronic analysis. Um, for the S Sinchronic analysis um there that is the analysis of a system of meaning um at a kind of ah without relation time whereas a diachronic relationship is. 12:53.20 Alan Slice of time. 12:58.76 Alan Um, ah. 13:05.18 Alan Yes. 13:06.22 Trace Fleeman Garcia How that relationship um changes within time. Um, so for Sauceo he considered semiotics to be a synchronic um a synchronic endeavor or his sort of his model of semiotics is a s sinchronic endeavor the way that within one without relation to time. 13:17.90 Alan Sure. 13:26.14 Trace Fleeman Garcia How these signs relate to each other whereas most of linguistics was considered um of what he considered to be a diachronic um system or analysis. Um. 13:31.70 Alan Yeah, absolutely So So a little bit of both. So yeah, and and I've used both in terms of trying to understand or relate back to attempting to tease out the meaning and metaphor. Particular figures deities Super mundane supernatural creatures one in an indigenous culture is called Yahura and it turned and the native people told us that this particular figure is. The mistress or master of the animals and it appears as a bird and it lives in the underworld and the name Yahura is a package that relates back to both the sound. The bird makes the screech and also. The death posture and life posture of that Animal. So of course as you deconstruct or look for this embedded symbolism in the meaning making of the verbiage the words, the lexicon you can tease out some salient elements and I'm sure that's also. Part of semiotics is it not. 14:51.72 Trace Fleeman Garcia Absolutely um, from a semiotic perspective that is absolutely that is already a semiotic um endeavor Even if it doesn't Um, even if it doesn't adopt the ah the same sort of rhetoric that other Semioticians might use. 15:05.31 Alan Um, yeah. 15:10.49 Trace Fleeman Garcia And this is something I've noticed in my own studies even outside of anthropology and archeology and critical theory. Um, that there is this overall in in Academia and in and in writing about the sciences. There is this turn towards meaning and that there is this turn. Ah toward Um, this turn towards. Um, kind of we talk a lot about physics envy but which is these ah different um disciplines which try to adopt a veneer of physical posturing to kind of look because there is this social capital that. 15:36.76 Alan Of Science right. 15:45.13 Alan Right. 15:46.24 Trace Fleeman Garcia Yeah, that is that is associated with physics and with mathematics. Um, but we're kind of seeing the opposite of that. Um, and with some of my research that I was presenting at the international society for biosemiotics. Um I offered this um that there's this question of the individual in biology. 16:00.51 Alan Okay. 16:06.40 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, and that there are these really new and very fashionable models that are coming out. Um like the information theory of individuality that is trying to apply information theoretical methods to the analysis of. Individuals and what I'm in my research I'm looking at that and I'm saying that this these these new researchers are looking for semionics that um, they're looking for semionics and that um there is what where what semionics has to offer. That um, information Theory doesn't have to doesn't can't give it has this advantage over information theory is that semiotics is ah is it doesn't flatten the um, the study of these signs. It is a necessarily qualitative form of analysis. Um. 16:54.49 Alan Fantastic. Well, we've used up all our time. Yes of you want to do a closing statement doc and and and tell our folks out there. What you think we've accomplished today. But. 17:01.72 Trace Fleeman Garcia Which sometimes crosses over into the quantitative. 17:14.30 Alan Give the summary give a little hook sign off. Yeah, you. 17:21.56 Trace Fleeman Garcia Um, oh me. 17:24.10 Alan Why is semiotic so interesting. 17:26.94 Trace Fleeman Garcia Yeah, me, okay I don't know I thought never mind so semiotics is at its heart. These studies. Ah this study of meaning making of semiosis and any process that holds meaning. Or creates meaning or interprets meaning is the it fits within the discipline of semionics and semionics gives us this this wonderful grammar. This wonderful model this wonderful form of rhetoric for this analysis of meaning and as we are. As Semionic Theory Develops we are looking at ways in which sometimes um, interesting and surprising ways in which the world is saturated and indeed overflowing with meaning. 18:11.47 Alan Fantastic Trace This was a wonderful journey and I really really appreciate your time see on the flip flop gang Hope you enjoyed it God bless.