This week we discussed stories and how they have a
relationship with place (Kuttainen 2015), where a story can take the position
as a map, and vice-versa. Such as how the original people of the land would
trek the country in the days before English intervention. They used a system of
Songlines, which were about turning the space around them into internal sheet
music, a map highlighted by the key visual markers of the environment around
them, accessing the next footing as you sing the corresponding notes/lyrics.
They meant more than a map though as they would tell the
story of tribes, or Dreamings, a tribe with ties to self and identity, in that
the user links themselves to that they share a connection with. An act of
culture and interaction with one’s tribes, a songline would be the land marked
ownership by the separate dreamings and if strayed from the path, you may end
up where you don’t belong. (Chatwin, 1987)
The idea of dreamings and songlines can be interpreted today
in social networks, my example being Tumblr, where in texts are posted under
tags which identify a post, allowing users to seek these genres out and carry
on a journey through them. In this instance, a tag is similar in nature to a Dreaming,
if you stick to your tag, you’re likely to find ‘brothers’ under the same
dreaming, perhaps on the same string of posts (or Songline), it’s a network and
a narrative spun out of space and place encompassing these ‘brothers’.
However, despite sharing a few key similarities, the
difference is in the form, and the literal aspects of songlines (such as
singing) aren’t necessarily the guiding factors of an online-songline, that
said, the aspect of guiding yourself by what you see as key indications of
where you’re going and where you’ve been remain.
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Images:
Mills, J. (2010). Mapping Australia: Cinematic Cartographies of (Dis)Location. Retrieved from http://sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature-articles/mapping-australia-cinematic-cartographies-of-dislocation/
References:
https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_1996330_1&course_id=_69740_1
Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. London. Retrieved from
https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/webapps/Conc-camcontent-bb_bb60/items/getitem.jsp?as_course_code=14-BA1002-TSV-INT-SP2&content_id=_1631285_1&course_id=_60553_1&doc_id=30251
According to your point of view,I am strong agree with you. As individual, we often come to understand our identity through our stories. To me telling a story gave me an incredible feeling of being accepted by a community or a group. The stories are an essential part of community culture. Also, stories serves vital function, such as justifying community traditions. In lecture week 5, Kuttainen demonstrate how identity of community is directly connected to it's narrative and she mentioned that a narrative is a big picture and how it's everything connects, its the past, present, and the future of the community. From these explanations compare to your point of view I understand that a narrative or stories give context to daily activities, discussion and content. The connexion between the construction of the life narrative and transformational learning is increasingly clear. (McAdam 1993). According to Neuhauser said that stories are effective as educational tools because they are believable, rememberable and entertaining. (Neuhauser, 1993).
ReplyDeleteReference
Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and making of place.
Lecture 5: stories and place. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
McAdams, D.P. The stories We Live by ( New York: The Guilford, Press, 1993).
Neuhauser (1993). Stories as effective of education. P.356-P.369
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ReplyDeleteAt first glance, we assume maps are simply used for navigation, however that isn't that case. So what exactly are they used for? Personally, I enjoyed reading your blog because of the way you incorporated a piece of Indigenous Australian history; unfortunately, there's not a lot that I know about Aboriginal peoples, so learning about their method of navigation, was truly amazing. "A song was both a map and direction-finder" (Chatwin, 1987, p. 13) which enabled Aboriginal peoples to identify other tribe members, territory and even taught them to recognise the earth itself as a sacred space. This demonstrates that maps are more than a form of navigation, they are also a form of narrative. And in last weeks lecture, we learned that narrative is a way we understand and organise the world through narrative. Fundamentally, we need narrative to understand our surroundings; similarly aboriginal people could not understand the world without their ancestor's songlines (Kuttainen, 2015). It is uncanny how we use this method of understanding and conceptualising the world in our online social networks, as you said, through a means of hashtag categories.
ReplyDeleteReferences
Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. London, Great Britain: British Library
Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002 Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place. Week 4: Maps. Retrieved from:
https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002 Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place. Week 5: Stories and Place. Retrieved from: https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au