Graeme Were

The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience

Art Innovation: A Pacific Perspective Translating things: barkcloth displays in Fiji London Framing the ahu fara: clothing, gift-giving and painting in Tahiti Uniforms for all: dressing modern in Papua Translations: Textiles and texts in modernising PNG Dressing for Transition marriage, clothing and change in Vanuatu. Material Translation: A Comparative Perspective on the Logic of Clothing Materiality and the social analysis of things Dress-sense cultural logic in Maori performance dress Niuean Hiapo, 1860-1890 The Land has eyes: reel performance real performance in Rotuma Clothing and contemporary Pacific Art. Dress and Address: comparative perspectives on the art of clothing

Well Connected to Your Digital Object? E-Curator: A Web-based e-Science Platform for Museum Artefacts

This article describes the development of a new virtual research tool for the Arts and Humanities community. The E-Curator project led by Museums and Collections at University College London took a practical, multidisciplinary approach to traceable storage and transmission of three-dimensional (3D) laser scan data sets. The objective was to establish protocols for retrievable data acquisition and processing to facilitate remote web-based access to museum e-artefacts and thereby enhance international scholarship. An Internet capable 3D visualization tool was designed, using state-of-the-art colour laser scanning technology for digitizing museum objects in combination with an e-science developed data storage and retrieval solution (Storage Resource Broker). The prototype was developed in discussion with a team of museum curators and conservators who were able to compare the handling of a range of real objects with their virtual copies on-screen. This article will explore two case studies of objects recorded with an Arius3D colour laser scanner and a handheld Metris K-Scan laser scanner to illustrate the 3D recording methodology and highlight how the developed system is capable of complementing traditional cataloguing and analysis methods for museum artefacts and enable digital repatriation. Anthropological research, based on observations from the example of the E-Curator project, is discussing the production, reception, and circulation of 3D digital objects and the networked technology of the digital image.

Objects of Learning An Anthropological Approach to Mathematics Education

Over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of studies in ethnomathematics dedicated towards shedding light on its importance in enhancing education (cf. Bishop, 1988; Gerdes, 1985). Many ethno mathematicians have utilized the object world as a tool in the learning of mathematical concepts, but little research to date has focused on the role of objects as agents that activate mathematical thought. In this article I argue that the material qualities of objects can mobilize mathematical thinking and act as vehicles for learning. I show that geometric patterns incised on traditional arts and crafts are effective tools in the mathematics classroom in cultures that tend towards visual forms of knowledge. Anthropology is ideally suited for this type of study and as I aim to show, an ethnographic approach can give valuable insights into education and knowledge technology.

Niabara - The Western Solomon Islands War Canoe at the British Museum - 3D Documentation, Virtual Reconstruction and Digital Repatriation

This paper describes the 3D digital documentation of a highly significant cultural heritage object from the Melanesian Southwest Pacific, held in the ethnographic collections of the British Museum. The object, which dates from about 1910, is a large plank-built war canoe from the island of Vella Lavella in New Georgia, Solomon Islands. 3D laser scanning is paired with anthropological research, which aims to deliver a holistic virtual 3D reconstruction and multimedia interactive delivery of the boat for the digital repatriation to the source community.

On the materials of mats: thinking through design in a Melanesian society

This article examines the selective use of plant materials in design in Melanesia. It explores – through an analysis of pandanus leaf mats in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea – how makers select fibres on the basis of their capacity to express social relations to varying temporalities before their natural decay. J.J. Gibson’s theory of affordance and Donald Norman’s concept of mapping are critically applied for this purpose. This approach emphasizes how social and temporal relations are condensed into objects, and refocuses anthropological attention towards materials and their affordances in the production of material culture.

Re-engaging the university museum: knowledge, collections and communities at University College London

Abstract In an era when university museums in the UK are engaging new audiences, this paper examines University College Londons (UCL) museum and focuses on issues of knowledge, participation and community. Drawing on diverse collections and interests, this paper examines how competing ideologies relating to teaching and research collections raise complex internal political issues in encompassing diverse audiences. At the heart of this are matters of knowledge, institutional and personal memory, possession and control. This paper demonstrates how participatory approaches are as much about the management of knowledge and securing research funding as they are about education and inclusiveness. In doing so, this paper raises some germane questions about the future direction of the university museum in an era when universities are democratising access to academic knowledge.

Digital heritage in a Melanesian context: authenticity, integrity and ancestrality from the other side of the digital divide.

This article examines how digital heritage, in the form of 3D digital objects, fits into particular discourses around identity, ancestrality and cultural transmission in Melanesia. Through an ethnographic analysis of digital heritage use amongst the Nalik community in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), it demonstrates how digital heritage is understood not in terms of deceit and a loss of authenticity, but instead, towards an understanding of authenticity in terms of completeness and integrity. A notion of completeness and integrity, I argue, has the effect of creating an authentic experience of the past for Nalik communities by bringing back museum objects (‘old’ objects) that have been dispersed amongst museums and heritage institutions worldwide. In tracing out the operations and effects of how a Melanesian community engages with 3D digital objects, this article offers unique ethnographic insights into digital heritage in ways that challenge widely-held assumptions about the heightened value placed on the original object over its digital counterpart.

Imaging digital lives

This special issue of the Journal of Material Culture may not have been possible in 1998 when its inaugural volume was published. To say that there have been rapid advances in imaging technologies since then is to greatly understate the sheer impact that digital images of all kinds have had in shaping our lives. We now live in an unprecedented era where digital images permeate our lives, interlacing themselves with our loves and memories, our leisure activities and professional engagements. Digital film and photography, the internet, smartphones, interactive films and installations, digital archives, 3D imaging technologies, CCTV and virtual environments are now part of the quotidian life of many of us living in those parts of the world touched upon by such media. So why create a special issue on ‘Imaging Digital Lives’? The idea originated from a mutual interest Paolo Favero and I both held in the ways peoples marginalized from mainstream society were crafting digital images for the purposes of individual and community affirmation. The emergence of cheap and portable digital imaging technologies such as cameras and mobile phones, widespread availability of internet access and broadband connectivity, and the development of easy-to-use online software applications and web-based storage sites (such as Flickr and Facebook) have all influenced the uptake of imaging technologies for such activities. Our interests focused on directing scholarly attention to public participation with digital images on the part of marginalized communities in two key areas: firstly, the use and application of digital images within these communities; and secondly, the social and material impact of digital images on their lives. We wanted to generate a cross-disciplinary debate on the emerging relationship between digital images and people’s claims to subjectivity, political visibility and collectivity, amongst a range of scholars working with different types of digital images. Our goal was to develop insights into how image-based practices opened an active space from which to assert ‘the right to look’ (Mirzoeff, 2011). ‘The right to look’ emphasizes a case of how dominant technologies such as digital imagining tools have been appropriated by those whom the technology seeks to control. Our attention was focused on the other side of the digital divide: those marginalized communities – such as indigenous,

Empathie avec la matière. Comment repenser la nature de l’action technique

Empathie avec la matiere : comment repenser la nature de l’action technique.L’importance des materiaux est souvent minimisee dans l’analyse des systemes sociaux et techniques alors qu’ils faconnent les bases memes du monde dans lequel nous vivons. Cet article se propose de questionner cette omission en attirant l’attention sur la nature des materiaux et des actions calculees qu’ils occasionnent. Nous soutenons que le potentiel transformatif des materiaux joue un role essentiel quant a leur choix et leur utilisation, lequel potentiel va de pair avec une certaine empathie, une « intersubjectivite », dont la nature est determinante pour comprendre comment les individus interpretent leur monde social de maniere abstraite, generalisable et souvent immuable. Nous examinons la nature de l’empathie avec les materiaux a travers une serie d’etudes de cas ramenes du Pacifique, ou le role du concret dans l’imagination sociale occupe une place importante dans les etudes ethnographiques, contrairement aux collections d’artefacts qui, curieusement, demeurent en marge, un simple temoignage de la description du monde social.

Representing Doi Moi: history, memory and shifting national narratives in late-socialist Vietnam

Abstract In late-socialist states, what are the drivers of shifts in national narratives and how can a focus on the museum method reveal the way state institutions construct national myths and nationalist ideologies? This paper addresses these questions by focusing on a behind-the-scenes ethnography of an exhibition celebrating 30 years of Doi Moi – the economic reform period in Vietnam that commenced in 1986. Focusing on the museum as method – the process of documenting how curators deliberate over labels, objects, photos and so forth – the paper analyses how national narratives are authored and transformed through curatorial exchanges and expert forums. By focusing on how aesthetics and achievement provide a foundation for inclusive interpretative strategies that integrate official histories alongside personal memories, this paper reflects on the alienating effects of official histories in state institutions and the strategies by which people appropriate these to reclaim their past.