Early examples of cartography - also called Micronesian Stick Charts. Here is a link to some pictures of the actual thing if you'd like to learn more. Cultural appropriation wasn't forefront of our minds a decade ago, but I think we were dancing closely with it here. Hopefully it was more cultural appreciation than appropriation but TBH I am not so sure.
Personally... I feel like the general offense-philia that has arisen in our world is not a great direction.
So many of the best things in our world come from when cultures meld, merge, and share.
Culture historically has always been a flowing changing thing influenced by the cultures it comes in contact with.
Shoot - the very fact that we’re writing speaks to how culture flows... only a handful of cultures invented writing, and yet its spread to nearly the whole world at this point.
Culture at a period of time is like water in a river... it came from somewhere - it’s going somewhere else - if we try and just stop it at one point it’s no longer a river and it doesn’t honor where it even came from.
I think there’s value in honoring where things came from, but I don’t know if the way that cultural appropriation as an idea has developed into trying to prevent the collaboration of cultures is a good thing.
Anyway - loved this piece, loved the information and history as it makes it even more cool to me, and I love how you were able to take things that people might find as junk and turn them into something that is obviously and inherently valuable.
Early examples of cartography - also called Micronesian Stick Charts. Here is a link to some pictures of the actual thing if you'd like to learn more. Cultural appropriation wasn't forefront of our minds a decade ago, but I think we were dancing closely with it here. Hopefully it was more cultural appreciation than appropriation but TBH I am not so sure.
http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/stick_charts/
That is incredibly interesting!
Personally... I feel like the general offense-philia that has arisen in our world is not a great direction.
So many of the best things in our world come from when cultures meld, merge, and share.
Culture historically has always been a flowing changing thing influenced by the cultures it comes in contact with.
Shoot - the very fact that we’re writing speaks to how culture flows... only a handful of cultures invented writing, and yet its spread to nearly the whole world at this point.
Culture at a period of time is like water in a river... it came from somewhere - it’s going somewhere else - if we try and just stop it at one point it’s no longer a river and it doesn’t honor where it even came from.
I think there’s value in honoring where things came from, but I don’t know if the way that cultural appropriation as an idea has developed into trying to prevent the collaboration of cultures is a good thing.
Anyway - loved this piece, loved the information and history as it makes it even more cool to me, and I love how you were able to take things that people might find as junk and turn them into something that is obviously and inherently valuable.
Great work :)