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"An Introduction to the Paleontology of Symbols" |
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|---|---|---|---|
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Physiological |
Technical |
Social |
Figurative |
|
freeing the hand |
tool use, manual chaining of operations, gestural communication |
transmission through imitation; technical lineage |
Stylized tools, rhythmic ornament |
|
freeing the face |
speech |
collective ritual; mythic transmission |
chant, ritual sound |
|
face-hand coordination |
mimed gesture chains; rhythmic movement |
role differentiation; coordinated action |
Dance, performance |
|
Brain expansion |
Operational memory; sequencing |
planned labor; intergenerational continuity |
Narrative; symbolic abstraction |
|
Eye-hand coupling |
line engraving; mark-making |
Memory objects; totems |
Mythogram; ideograph |
|
Eye-hand reconfigured |
Sequencing of gesture into units |
Adminstrative class; labor division |
writing; linear phonetic-symbolic |
|
Rhythmic entrainment |
codified operations; repetition |
Guilds; ritualized knowledge |
Pattern; repetition |
|
Symbolic Abstraction? |
Code; notation; recording |
Bureaucratic management; cybernetics |
Diagram |
Leroi-Gourhan's "Introduction to a Paleontology of Symbols" or Can Art Save Us From AI?
Chapter 10 of Gesture and Speech, "Introduction to a Paleontology of Symbols," marks a key inflection point in Leroi-Gourhan’s argument. Up to this point, the book develops a sweeping account of human evolution through biological form and function and the technical thresholds in which these are externalized: gesture, tool use, language, externalized memory. But here, the question turns: how can we account for art, not as a byproduct or anomaly, but as an expression that runs through, and potentially exceeds, these functional layers? And what happens to the human once these functions are externalized into machines and AI? (Keep in mind, this was published in '64!)
So we tried to to make sense of the layer metaphor that emerges here, and try to think through the previous arguments, but this time with art as something like a third form, co-emerging with gesture and speech.
Here's a preliminary attempt to diagram this a bit. Very much open for debate...