Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN words tekhne and ars were used, respectively in Greek
ART A D TECH OLOGY and Roman society, to describe every kind of activity
involving the manufacture of durable objects by people
"ART" AND "TEClINOLOGY" ARE MERE WORDS. AND AS who depended on such work for a living, from the
with all words, their meanings are not fixed but have painter to the cobbler, from the temple architect to the
changed significantly in the course of their history. They builder of pigsties. This is not to say that customers
are still changing. But I believe it remains true of failed to distinguish between aesthetic and utilitarian
modern-if not postmodern-thought that the criteria in their estimations of the objects produced. But
meanings of art and technology are held to be somehow in every case, it was the craft skill of the practitioner that
opposed, as though drawn from fields of human was supposed to ensure a successful outcome (Burford
endeavor that are in certain respects antithetical. This 1972: 13-14).
opposition, however, is scarcely more than a century old, The connotation of skill is preserved in many words
and would have seemed strange to Anglophone ears as derived from the same roots and that remain in common
late as the seventeenth century, when artists were still currency today. On the one hand we have "technics" and
considered no different from artisans, when the "technique"; on the other hand such terms as "artless"-
methods of working in any particular branch of art meaning clumsy or lacking in skill-and, of course,
could be described as "technical," and when the term "artifact." Yet the apparent continuity masks an
"technology" had just been coined to denote the important shift, towards abstracting the components of
scientific study of these methods (Williams intelligence, sensibility and expression that are essential
1976:33-34). Etymologically, "art" is derived from the to the accomplishment of any craft from the actual bodily
Latin artem or ars, while "technology" was formed upon movement of the practitioner in his or her environment.
the stem of a term of classical Greek origin, namely Thus the technique of the pianist comes to refer to the
tekhne. Originally, ars and tekhne meant much the same practiced ability of his fingers to find their way around
thing, namely skill of the kind associated with the keyboard and to hit the desired notes, as distinct from
craftsmanship. As Alison Burford has pointed out in her the inherent musicality of the performance. "A player
study of the craftsmen of ancient Greece and Rome, the may be perfect in technique," wrote Sir Charles Grove,
17
18 / CHA PTER 2 BEYOND ART AND TECHNOLOGY / 19
"and yet have neither soul nor intelligence." Likewise, we Here, then, lies the source of the now familiar division and lenses of the cultural imagination. It mediates a These qualifications aside, it is fair to say that
have come a long way from the days when, as in the year between the respective fields of art and technology. An dialogue, not between human beings and nature, but compared to art, technology has been left largely on the
1610, it was possible to eulogize a certain composer as object or performance could be a work of art, rather among persons in society. Like language, it encodes sidelines as a topic of social or cultural anthropological
"the most artificial and famous AJfonso Ferrabosco" than a mere artifact, to the extent that it escapes or meanings. Thus technology works; art signifies: technical inquiry. Yet for all that, there is a persistent current of
(Rooley 1990:5). As David Lowenthal has observed, "time transcends the determinations of the technological action, as Edmund Leach put it, "produces observable doubt about the cross-cultural applicability of the
has reversed the meaning of artificial from "full of deep system. And its creator could be an artist, rather than a results in a strictly mechanical way," whereas art is a genre concept of art, whereas that of the concept of technology
skill and art" to "shallow, contrived and almost mere artisan, insofar as the work is understood to be an of ritual or expressive action whose purpose is essentially has seldom been seriously questioned. I think it is true to
worthless" (1996:209). By the same token, the artifact is expression of his or her own subjective being. Where communicative-to convey information in a symbolic say that the majority of anthropologists, if called to
regarded no longer as the original outcome of a skilled, technological operations are predetermined, art is code about such matters as identity and cosmology reflect upon the issue, would not deny that there exists a
sensuous engagement between the craftsman and his raw spontaneous; where the manufacture of artifacts is a (Leach )966:403, cf. 1976:9). In short, art has been split sphere of capability in every human population that can
material, but as a copy run off mechanically from a pre- process of mechanical replication, art is the creative from technology along the lines of an opposition be called "technological:' and most, indeed, would be
established template or design. This debasement of craft production of novelty. These distinctions can be between the mental and the material, and between content with the idea that technology varies from the
to the "merely technical" or mechanical execution of multiplied almost indefinitely, but they are all driven by semiotics and mechanics. simple (in nonindustrial societies) to the complex (in
predetermined operational sequences went hand in hand the same logic, which is one that carves out a space for Despite the apparent symmetry of this opposition, the industrial societies). How else are we to interpret those
with the elevation of art to embrace the creative exercise human freedom and subjectivity in a world governed by respective trajectories of the anthropologies of art and regular disclaimers to the effect that in speaking of
of the imagination. As a result, the artist came to be objective necessity. It is a logic that operates as much in technology have been decidedly asymmetrical. The "simple societies" it is technological simplicity that we
radically distinguished from the artisan, and the art-work the field of exchange as in that of production (Ingold anthropology of art has long held a secure place in the have in mind, and that this, in itself, should cast no
from the artifact (Coleman 1988:7). 1995:15-16). Thus the modern distinction between the discipline, whereas the anthropology of technology, as a reflection upon the intelligence, social organization, or
The decisive break, according to Raymond Williams, true work of art and the replicated artifact has its subfield, appears to be a late starter that has only very cultural sophistication of the people in question? When
came in the England of the late eighteenth century, with parallel in that between the "pure gift" and the market recently begun to acquire a significant momentum of its it comes to art, on the other hand, anthropologists have
the exclusion of engravers from the newly formed Royal commodity: the former given spontaneously and own. Admittedly, my perception of the situation may be continually worried about the dangers of ethnocentrism
Academy, which was reserved for practitioners of the motivated (at least in theory) by personal feeling; the biased by my own intellectual background in the British entailed in importing into the field of cross-cultural
"fine" arts of painting, drawing, and sculpture (Williams latter exchanged in line with impersonal calculations of tradition of social anthropological scholarship. In orth comparison a concept that carries such strong evaluative
1976:33). It was, of course, symptomatic of a general supply and demand, following the laws of the so-called America things are rather different, largely on account of overtones, and whose contemporary meaning is so
tendency to distinguish intellectual from manual labor, "market mechanism." In both fields, of production and the continuing recognition of archaeology as a closely bound up with widely held ideas about the rise
along the common axis of a more fundamental series of exchange, fine art and pure gift delineate a residual space subdiscipline of anthropology. It has been customary, on and ascendancy of Western civilization. But this leaves us
oppositions between mind and body, creativity and for the free expression of individual selfhood in a society both sides of the Atlantic, to distinguish archaeology by with something of a paradox. Why should our
repetition, and freedom and determination. But the dominated by the machine and the market. But in both its concern with the material record of human activities, confidence in terms like art and technology, as dimen-
more that "art" came to be associated with the allegedly fields, too, the distinctions are recent, and closely tied to as preserved in durable artifacts, and this has inevitably sions of cross-cultural analysis, be inversely propor-
higher human faculties of creativity and imagination, the rise of a peculiarly modern conception of the human entailed a strong focus on technology. But whereas in tional to the degree of elaboration of the respective
the more its residual connotations of useful but subject. Britain, the distinction has served to keep the study of domains of anthropological inquiry that they delineate?
nevertheless habitual bodily skills were swallowed up by The division between art and technology, as it has technology out of anthropology, and to legitimize I believe this paradox can be explained as follows.
the notion of technology. For by the beginning of the come to be institutionalized in modern society, has anthropology's claim to deal with the people and their Having placed technology beyond the pale of culture
twentieth century this term, too, had undergone a affected anthropology as much as any other field of social relationships rather than the things they used and and society, as a quasi-autonomous system of produc-
crucial shift of meaning. Where once it had referred to inquiry. Until fairly recently, the literatures in the left behind, in North America it is still possible to tive forces, the way was open for anthropologists, at least
the framework of concepts and theory informing the anthropology of art and in the anthropology of present the study of technology as one of archaeology's those of a "sociocultural" persuasion, to ignore it. It was
scien tific study of prod uctive practices, technology came technology remained almost completely isolated from distinctive contributions to the overall anthropological just one of those things, like climate or ecology, that may
to be regarded as a corpus of rules and principles one another. Technology was located within the sphere project. In continental Europe the situation is different or may not be a determining factor in human affairs, but
installed at the heart of the apparatus of production of ecological adaptation, mediating the material relations again. For the shift in the meaning of technology to whose study can be safely left to others. As climate is for
itself, whence it was understood to generate practice as a between human populations and their environments. which I referred earlier, from a systematic mode of meteorologists and ecology for ecologists, so technology
program generates an output. Technology, now, did not For assorted cultural ecologists, cultural materialists, and inquiry to the generative logic of practice, remained is for engineers-or perhaps even, in light of my earlier
discipline the scholar in his study of techniques, but Marxists, the conjunction of environment and more of less confined to the Anglophone world. In remarks, for archaeologists. Whoever claims to "do"
rather the practitioner in his application of them. He technology-if not actually determinant of cultural France, technology continues to this day to mean "the technology, there is no doubt about what it is. Art, to the
became, in effect, an operative, bound to the mechanical form-constitutes the ground (Gnllldlage) upon which study of techniques." For this reason, the word technique contrary, is clearly positioned within a social context
implementation of an objective system of productive the house of culture is built (see Godelier 1986:6). Art, has retained its original connotation of skilled and embodies cultural meaning. It is, therefore, self-
forces, according to principles of functioning that by contrast, along with such forms as myth and ritual, is craftsmanship. And French scholars have taken the lead evidently an object of study for anthropologists. But
remain indifferent to particular human aptitudes and supposed to comprise the patterns on the walls, the world in developing an anthropological approach to craft skills precisely because of its contextualization, the meaning of
sensibilities. (Sigaut 1985). "art" is thrown into question. Not for the first time, the
of sensory experience as it is refracted through the filters
20 / CHAPTER 2
BEYOND ART AND TECHNOLOGY / 21
very credentials that make a phenomenon eminently practice is a form of use, of tools and of the body. In one cannot be regarded simply as a technique of the body. conditions that are never the same from one moment to
worthy of anthropological study have cast a pall of of his dialogues, Plato has Socrates debate with a This was the position advocated in a now classic essay by the next (Bernstein 1996). Given the freedom of
uncertainty over whether the phenomenon exists "as character called Alcibiades on precisely this question. Marcel Mauss (I979[ 1934]). Taking his cue explicitly movement of the limbs as well as the elasticity of the
such" at all. It happened with the study of kinship, it "What are we to say of the shoemaker?," asks Socrates, from Plato, Mauss observed that technique does not, in muscles, Bernstein had observed, it is just not possible to
happened with the study of art, and now that "Does he cut with his tools only, or with his hands as itself, depend upon the use of tools. Song and dance are control the movements of the body in the same way as
anthropologists are at last beginning to recognize the welI?" Alcibiades is forced to concede that he does obvious examples. The dancer, according to Mauss, uses one might the workings of a machine made up of rigid,
social embeddedness of technological systems, it is indeed cut with his hands, and moreover that he uses his own body as an instrument; indeed so do we all, he interconnecting parts. From a close study of the
happening to the study of technology too. No sooner is not just his hands but his eyes-and by extension his declares, for the body is surely "man's first and most movements of a skilled blacksmith, hitting the iron on
technology reclaimed for anthropological inquiry, than whole body-to accomplish the work. Yet he had natural technical object, and at the same time technical the anvil over and over again with a hammer, Bernstein
we cease to know, for sure, what we are dealing with. already agreed, with Socrates, that there is a means." Moreover in the deployment of these means, found that while the trajectory of the tip of the hammer
The source of the problem, in my view, lies not in the fundamental difference between the user and the things the human agent experiences the resulting bodily was highly reproducible, the trajectories of individual
concept of art, nor in that of technology, but in the he uses. So who is this user? If it be man, counters movements as "of a mechanical, physical or physico- arm joints varied from stroke to stroke. At first glance
dichotomy between them. It is this, along with the idea Socrates, it cannot be his body, which is used. Only one chemical order" (Mauss 1979: 104). This reduction of the situation appears paradoxical: how can it be that the
that art floats in an ethereal realm of symbolic meaning, possibility remains, it must be the soul. "So," he the technical to the mechanical is an inevitable motion of the hammer rather than that of the limbs is
above the physical world over which technology seeks concludes, "do you require some yet clearer proof that consequence of the isolation of the body as a natural or reliably reproduced, when it is only by way of the limbs
control, that is tainted by its association with modernity. the soul is man?" Alcibiades is convinced (in Flew physical object, both from the (disembodied) agency that the hammer is made to move (cf. Latash 1996:286)?
The idea would have made no sense to the craftsmen of 1964:35-37). There is no reason, however, why we that puts it to work and from the environment in which Clearly, the smith's movements cannot be understood as
ancient Greece or Rome. They knew what they meant by should have to follow suit. "It would be wrong to it operates. To understand the true nature of skill we the output of a fixed motor program, nor are they
tekhne or ars, and it was a matter neither of mechanical assume," as Roger Coleman caustically remarks, "that must move in the opposite direction, that is, to restore arrived at through the application of a formula. The
functioning nor of symbolic expression, but of skilled because Plato was a Greek he knew what he was talking the human organism to the original context of its active secret of control, Bernstein concluded, lies in "sensory
practice. It is my contention that by going back to the about." He was no craftsman, and had no practical engagement with the constituents of its surroundings. corrections," that is in the continual adjustment or
original connotations of ars and tekhne as skill, we can experience whatever of shoemaking or any other trade. As Gregory Bateson argued, by way of his example of the "tuning" of movement in response to an ongoing
overcome the deep divisions that currently separate the Plato's objective, in forcing a division between the skilled woodsman notching with an axe the trunk of a perceptual monitoring of the emergent task.
anthropologies of art and technology, and develop a far controlling mind and subservient body, was to establish tree he is felling, to explain what is going on we need to All this has implications for the way skills are learned,
more satisfactory account of the socially and the supremacy of abstract, contemplative reason over consider the dynamics of the entire man-axe-tree system which brings me to my fourth point. If, as Bernstein
environmentally situated practices of real human agents. menial work, or of theoretical knowledge over practical (Bateson 1973:433). The system is, indeed, as much contended, skilled practice cannot be reduced to a
In what follows I shall pursue three aspects of this task. application, and thereby to justify the institution of mental as physical or physiological, for these are, in formula, then it cannot be through the transmission of
First, I explain in more depth what I mean by skill. slavery (Coleman 1988: 11-12). Resurrected in the truth, but alternative descriptions of one and the same formulae that skills are passed from generation to
Secondly, I show how the continuity of tradition in Renaissance, Plato's division anticipated the debasement thing. Skill, in short, is a property not of the individual generation. Traditional models of social learning sepa-
skilled practice is a function not of the transmission of of craft that, as we have seen, came to be one of the human body as a biophysical entity, a thing-in-itself, but rate the intergenerational transmission of information
rules and representations but of the coordination of hallmarks of modernity. To recover the essence of skill, of the total field of relations constituted by the presence specifying particular techniques from the application of
perception and action. Thirdly, I show how a focus on as "both practical knowledge and knowledgeable of the organism-person, indissolubly body and mind, in this information in practice. First, a generative schema or
skill explodes the conventional dichotomy between practice" (Ingold 1990:8), we need a different concept of a richly structured environment. That is why the study program is established in the novice's mind from his
innate and acquired abilities, forcing a radical reappraisal use from the one invoked by Plato. Instead of thinking of skill, in my view, not only benefits from, but demands observations of the movements of already accomplished
of the ways we think about what is "cultural" and of use as what happens when we put two, initially an ecological approach (Ingold 1996: 178). practitioners; secondly, the novice imitates these move-
"biological" in humans. I shall illustrate my argument by separate things together-an agent with certain Granted that the foundations of skill lie in the ments by running off exemplars of the technique in
way of two examples: Maureen MacKenzie's (1991) study purposes or designs, and an instrument with certain irreducible condition of the practitioner's embedded- question from the schema. Now I do not deny that the
of the looping skills involved in making string bags functions-we can take it as the primary condition of ness in an environment, it follows-and this is my third learning of skills involves both observation and imita-
(bilum) among Telefol people of Central New Guinea, involvement of the craftsman, with his tools and raw point-that skilled practice is not just the application of tion. But the former is no more a matter of forming
and the study by N. E. and E. C. Collias (1984) of the nest materials, in an environment. In this sense the hands mechanical force to exterior objects, but entails qualities internal, mental representations of observed behavior
building skills of the male weaverbird. of care, judgment and dexterity (Pye 1968:22). Critically, than is the latter a matter of converting these representa-
and eyes of the shoemaker, as well as his cutting tools,
are not so much used as brought into use, through their this implies that whatever practitioners do to things is tions into manifest practice. For the novice's observation
incorporation into an accustomed (that is usual) pattern grounded in an attentive, perceptual involvement with of accomplished practitioners is not detached from, but
FIVE pO! TS ABOUT SKILL of dextrous activity. Purposiveness and functionality, them, or in other words, that they watch and feel as they grounded in, his own active, perceptual engagement with
then, are not pre-existing properties of the user and the work. As the Russian neuroscientist Nicholai Bernstein his surroundings. And the key to imitation lies in the
I begin by drawing attention to five points which I used, but rather immanent in the activity itself, in the argued some fifty years ago, the essence of dexterity lies intimate coordination of the movement of the novice's
believe are crucial to a proper appreciation of technical gestura I synergy of human being, tool and raw material. not in bodily movements themselves, but in the attention to others with his own bodily movement in the
skills. The first concerns what it means to say that My second point follows from this. It is that skill responsiveness of these movements to surrounding world. Through repeated practical trials, and guided by
BEYOND ART AND TECHNOLOGY / 23
22 / CHAPTER 2
24 / CHAPTER 2
Pye,D.
1993 Technology, Language, Intelligence: A
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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