Weaving communities of practice. Textiles, culture and identity in the Andes: a semiotic and ontological approach.
Lead Research Organisation:
Birkbeck, University of London
Department Name: European Cultures and Languages
Abstract
In place of writing, textiles in Andean civilizations were developed over millennia by visually literate populations to document and display complex data. Academic studies worldwide are intrigued by this massive cultural use of information display, yet limited in methods of approach. Drawing on new methodologies combining fieldwork, digital documentation, information visualization and ontology, this project develops a common language for understanding Andean cloth to be shared between Visual, Computer and Museum Studies.
Research to date has established that textiles bear messages. Some are understood; others are still inaccessible due to the incomplete data sets available for scrutiny, discontinuous time sequences of samples, and limited correlation with comparative materials from the ethnographic and historical record, and commentaries from living weavers. To overcome this, we opt for regional rather than local sampling procedures to give us greater access to materials, while our interdisciplinary approach promotes greater sample contextualization.
Through data mining and other web-based techniques, this wider sample contextualization will be articulated to a digital structural mapping of cloth. Our hypothesis is that weaving techniques, as conservative organising features, have ontological associations that can be mapped in a working grammar of textile design, and correlated with socio-cultural and historical data. Centred in a weaver's perspective, our approach goes beyond the analysis of surface features of cloth to give precedence to its technical and structural properties. Existing software, adapted to express Andean cloth's 3D nature, will feed into our database design, together with digital photos, video and text data. Our interface design gives priority to content-oriented access, and a graphical concept browser, to express this weaving perspective visually.
Database documentation, building on the site at the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, Birkbeck College London (bbk.ac.uk/cilavs), will systematize visual textile information, permitting academic disciplines an ontology-based exploration of weaving structures that map the social semiotic relations between cultural practices and identities. Workshops with curators of European and Latin American collections will coordinate information collection, methods, and analysis.
The main project stages of data collection, analysis and organisation, articulated to innovative means of access and analysis, have broad cognitive and curatorial goals. A secondary applied aspect responds to concerns of regional weavers to defend their cultural patrimony from piracy, and introduce local weaving repertories into new educational curricula. Our software and database design will respond to both these needs.
Research context
Research in Bolivia, Peru and Chile, combined with museum research there and in the UK, focuses on 3 regions on the basis of previous ethnographic, archaeological and museological knowledge and contacts, and 3 time horizons: Tiwanaku, the Inka-early colony, and the contemporary.
This study is urgent. As a result of former educational trends, ignoring regional textile production in favour of an emerging global textile industry, modern forms of literacy, and out-migration from rural communities, younger generations no longer want to weave. Current NGO interventions too are changing regional design repertories, and hence historical continuities and identity questions. At the same time, contemporary politics are generating alternative educational demands that seek new identity-based curricula in a decolonizing context. Our ethnographic research concerns the cultural rescue of endangered weaving practices, while providing new methods to document and link them to emerging industries.
Research to date has established that textiles bear messages. Some are understood; others are still inaccessible due to the incomplete data sets available for scrutiny, discontinuous time sequences of samples, and limited correlation with comparative materials from the ethnographic and historical record, and commentaries from living weavers. To overcome this, we opt for regional rather than local sampling procedures to give us greater access to materials, while our interdisciplinary approach promotes greater sample contextualization.
Through data mining and other web-based techniques, this wider sample contextualization will be articulated to a digital structural mapping of cloth. Our hypothesis is that weaving techniques, as conservative organising features, have ontological associations that can be mapped in a working grammar of textile design, and correlated with socio-cultural and historical data. Centred in a weaver's perspective, our approach goes beyond the analysis of surface features of cloth to give precedence to its technical and structural properties. Existing software, adapted to express Andean cloth's 3D nature, will feed into our database design, together with digital photos, video and text data. Our interface design gives priority to content-oriented access, and a graphical concept browser, to express this weaving perspective visually.
Database documentation, building on the site at the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, Birkbeck College London (bbk.ac.uk/cilavs), will systematize visual textile information, permitting academic disciplines an ontology-based exploration of weaving structures that map the social semiotic relations between cultural practices and identities. Workshops with curators of European and Latin American collections will coordinate information collection, methods, and analysis.
The main project stages of data collection, analysis and organisation, articulated to innovative means of access and analysis, have broad cognitive and curatorial goals. A secondary applied aspect responds to concerns of regional weavers to defend their cultural patrimony from piracy, and introduce local weaving repertories into new educational curricula. Our software and database design will respond to both these needs.
Research context
Research in Bolivia, Peru and Chile, combined with museum research there and in the UK, focuses on 3 regions on the basis of previous ethnographic, archaeological and museological knowledge and contacts, and 3 time horizons: Tiwanaku, the Inka-early colony, and the contemporary.
This study is urgent. As a result of former educational trends, ignoring regional textile production in favour of an emerging global textile industry, modern forms of literacy, and out-migration from rural communities, younger generations no longer want to weave. Current NGO interventions too are changing regional design repertories, and hence historical continuities and identity questions. At the same time, contemporary politics are generating alternative educational demands that seek new identity-based curricula in a decolonizing context. Our ethnographic research concerns the cultural rescue of endangered weaving practices, while providing new methods to document and link them to emerging industries.
Organisations
- Birkbeck, University of London (Lead Research Organisation)
- Victoria and Albert Museum (Project Partner)
- Centro Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco (Project Partner)
- National Museum of Archaeology (Project Partner)
- British Museum (Project Partner)
- Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara (Project Partner)
- Higher University of San Andrés (Project Partner)
- University of Saint Francis Xavier (Project Partner)
- Fundacion Asur (Project Partner)
- Catholic University of the North (Project Partner)
- University of Essex (Project Partner)
- SIARB (Project Partner)
- Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore (Project Partner)
- University of San Simón (Project Partner)
- University of Tarapacá (Project Partner)
Publications
Arnold D
(2018)
Making textiles into persons: Gestural sequences and relationality in communities of weaving practice of the South Central Andes
in Journal of Material Culture
Arnold D
(2012)
The intrusive k'isa : Bolivian struggles over colour patterns and their social implications
in World Art
Arnold D. Y.
(2012)
Hacia una visualización semántica del Vocabulario de la lengua aymara, de Ludovico Bertonio (1612)
in Ciencia y cultura: revista de la Universidad Católica Boliviana "San Pablo"
Arnold D. Y.
(2012)
Ciencia de tejer en los Andes: estructuras y técnicas de faz de urdimbre
Arnold D. Y.
(2012)
Andean weaving instruments for textile planning: The waraña coloured thread-wrapped rods and their pendant cords
in Indiana
Arnold D. Y.
(2013)
El textil tridimensional: la naturaleza del tejido como objeto y como sujeto
Description | 1. The project has successfully demonstrated the value of combining historical, museological, archaeological, computer science and ethnographic research in order to understand the structures and techniques of Andean textiles especially from the weaver's point of view. 2. The project has brought to light a significant archive of Andean textiles, scattered in disparate museums and other collections around the world. Using a sophisticated digital database, these have comprehensively documented and made this available via an open website. Some 300 archaeological textiles (ca. 600-1532 AD), 50 historical textiles (1532-1900), and 200 ethnographic textiles (1901-present) were documented. 3. The project has demonstrated the contributions that contemporary weavers can make to the research process. Our textile experts wove 1. The project has successfully demonstrated the value of combining historical, museological, archaeological, computer science and ethnographic research in order to understand the structures and techniques of Andean textiles especially from the weaver's point of view. 2. The project has brought to light a significant archive of Andean textiles, scattered in disparate museums and other collections around the world. Using a sophisticated digital database, these have comprehensively documented and made this available via an open website. Some 300 archaeological textiles (ca. 600-1532 AD), 50 historical textiles (1532-1900), and 200 ethnographic textiles (1901-present) were documented. 3. The project has demonstrated the contributions that contemporary weavers can make to the research process. Our textile experts wove 160 models of specific techniques evident in the museum examples to check how the techniques might have been woven in practice. This enabled significant progress in identifying and systematising knowledge of textile structures and techniques. 4. The project demonstrated the value of developing specialist software programmes (namely Sawu-3D and InaSawu) which enhance the documentation of textile structures, techniques and iconography, especially the 3D nature of cloth 5. The project has demonstrated the benefit of systematic documentation of textile collections, linking them to wider economic, environmental and cultural contexts, and making them available through a website underpinned by an innovative knowledge base system, allowing a greater range of questions to be asked of the material 6. The project has made significant new contributions to the understanding of the history and technology of weaving and spinning in the Andean region, demonstrating in particular the vitality and diversity of pre-Columbian textile production and its continuing legacies today. |
Exploitation Route | The project was designed specifically to produce materials and applications of use to museum and heritage sector professionals, Andean textile producers and public audiences interested in textile culture, design and history. 1. Museum & textile collections; heritage sector professionals The project seeks to expand knowledge of textile structure, by creating new terminology and means of textile identification, and providing a new basis for cataloguing, understanding and valuing museum textiles. Museums in Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Peru have already benefited from software, training and advice, and the project has the potential to influence heritage policy in Bolivia in particular. Museums in the UK and elsewhere will also benefit by the increased accessibility and enhanced quality of documentation about their collections. 2. Andean textile producers Weavers in rural communities in the Andean region are potential beneficiaries of knowledge concerning ancient weaving instruments, techniques used for shearing alpacas and llamas and for spinning their wool into finer threads, use of traditional natural dyes, and the meaning of terms in Quechua and Aymara related to specific weaving techniques and structures. Textile production remains an important source of income for rural communities. 3. Non-academic public audiences The project seeks to increase public awareness, in Latin America and the UK, of the sophistication and impact of pe-Columbian textile production, and so to highlight the economic and cultural contribution of weaving communities in the Andean region today. Making information concerning textile design and structure more widely available will also have potential applications in the creative and cultural sectors. |
Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Creative Economy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Environment Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
URL | http://www.weavingcommunities.org |
Description | 'Weaving Communities of Practice' has made a substantial impact on cultural life by creating new systems of cataloguing and digitising collections of Andean textiles and developing a digital, online database to manage complex visual information. Two museums in the UK and 10 in Latin America (Bolivia, Chile and Peru) have directly benefited from the project both in the development of the database and in the training provided; rural communities in Bolivia have also benefited from the recognition and recovery of their traditional craft. |
First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
Impact Types | Cultural Societal Economic |
Title | Data relating to Andean textiles |
Description | Around 30 different spreadsheets, including descriptions of the general terminology and concrete textiles in terms of their type, size, form, color, iconography, structure. Two of the key spreadsheets are ProductoTextil which stores information about the different known textiles - "the register"; and Vocabulary which contains a complete set of permissible words or phrases that can be used in the register (excluding numbers and free-text descriptions) - "the vocabulary". The information in these spreadsheets has been encoded within the ontology, which is included within the knowledge base system developed by the project. As an intermediate representation, between the spreadsheets and the digitized ontology, an intermediate representation was also produced in the form of a set of visual diagrams (Y-Maps). |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | None |
Title | Knowledge Base of Andean Weaving |
Description | Knowledge base of information relating to Andean weaving techniques that aims to preserve this cultural heritage. Comprises images, videos, textual descriptions and an Ontology that captures the knowledge of domain experts. The whole knowledge base is accessed via user-friendly website and includes a search facility over the ontology. |
Type Of Material | Data handling & control |
Year Produced | 2014 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | Development of an ontology |
URL | http://www.weavingcommunities.org |
Title | InaSawu |
Description | Graphical editor able to document different kinds of textile structures and techniques. Able to represent arbitrarily complex structures by changing the basic unit of modelling from warp and weft threads to simple crossings of two thread segments that can be placed anywhere on the canvas. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | Ability to understand weaving techniques |
URL | http://www.weavingcommunities.org/about/software |
Title | Sawu-3D |
Description | Graphical editor able to document different kinds of textile structures and techniques. Able to represent complex structures of warp-faced rectilinear weaves. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2010 |
Impact | Ability to construc a textile digitally and vizualise it in 3D. |
URL | http://www.weavingcommunities.org/about/software |
Description | Dissemination Event |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The 'Weaving Communities of Practice' Knowledge Base is one of the key outcomes of an AHRC-funded, collaborative research project involving academics, contributors and partners in Bolivia, Peru, Chile and the UK. It holds extensive information about textile production in the Andean region, ranging from early archaeological to contemporary periods. The Knowledge Base provides a unique and innovative resource for archaeologists, museum curators, contemporary weavers and the fashion industry (www.weavingcommunities.org). This event presented the 'Weaving Communities of Practice' Knowledge Base developed in this project, which provides a unique and innovative resource for archaeologists, museum curators, contemporary weavers and the fashion industry (www.weavingcommunities.org), and discussed its potential in advancing our knowledge of an important area of ethnographic, archaeological and museological research, as well as its potential impact on - the preservation and development of regional textile production and design repertories in Latin America - creative practices and production in the UK and Latin America - the development and modeling of new database software - new knowledge domains The Event provided a demonstration of the Knowledge Base, a discussion of possibilities for further collaboration - including the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew -, and networking opportunities (in particular with the ReCREATE knowledge exchange network). The Event also included an artist, whose work had been inspired by the Knowledge Base and brought together academics and weavers with interest in Andean textiles. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Textile Sculptures |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Audience enjoyed the exhibition and open event Raising awareness of peruvian textile art among British public |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
URL | http://www.weavingcommunities.org/pdf-files/textiles_Layout1.pdf |
Description | Water Quipu: A performance lecture with video and slide projections by Cecilia Vicuña |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | This event was organized to celebrate the completion of the project and to present the project website. The audience was interested in the website and some of them signed up for an evaluation session. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
URL | http://www.weavingcommunities.org/about/events |