Week 1

First weeks lecture was a very quick look at the history of Indiginous art, design and culture. The following is lecture notes and further research on cosmology, as this topic interests me a lot. The evolution of humans and their history (where we come from) and the different beliefs/religions each culture has amazes me: 

Cosmology

The ‘Universe’ is its central character. All characters have an ancestry that has made them what they are. A character's ancestry is one of the mysteries that the story must reveal. Even a shadowy character is defined by his, or her, shadowy ancestry. The cosmologist tells us that the first ancestor of the Universe was the Singularity which began the four forces of nature, which together formed the Wild, and in turn began energy and matter and space and time. An un-named No-thing transformed, becoming Some-thing - everything in fact. [1] This is basically a storyteller describing how the origins of everything came to be.  These theorys may be different to that offered by the Big Bang theory, but eh core narrative structure remains. ‘Back as far as we can go, an originated state of affairs was disrupted by some event, followed by a sequence of events, thus the universe came into being’.

Australian Aboriginal cosmological stories originate from the creative epoch of 'the Dreaming' in which ancestral beings created features of the physical landscape which embody their spirit and imprint their power in the landscape. These ancestral events are recorded in ritual, song and story that the people refer to as the 'telling of the land'. The stories explain how certain topographical features were created and remained behind as the body of the Dreaming spirit. Natural phenomena and rock carvings left by the ancestral beings indicate places where significant events occurred as they passed through the land. Some mark the exact places where ancestors departed from the land, and all provide potent reminders of the continuing reality of ancestral events. The song-cycles of these sacred ancestral events subtend the totemic creation mythologies sacred to each family grouping and each individual dreaming and define relationship, custom and law. The 'telling of the land' defines familial relationship to 'country' and the custodial responsibilities that attend that relationship. Each individual holds a part of the song-cycle that pertains to the corresponding place where they were conceived. As the people are part of the land and the land part of the people, these losses rob the people of their wholeness.

The Wondjina is the term used by the Australian aboriginal people to define their Creator Gods of the DreamTime, creating and influencing the landscape and its inhabitants. This figure is found in the Bradshaw Paintings, in the Kimberley region, which is among the earliest figurative paintings ever executed. These paintings trace the migration of modern man out of Africa 65,000-85,000 years ago. Aboriginal people repaint these to ensure the continuity of Wondjinas presence.

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[1]  Ainslie Yardley, “Historical perspectives”, Creativity Country. http://www.creativitycountry.net.au/creativity/cosmology.htm (accessed 29th July)

Interesting Links:

• http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/
• http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/bradshaws/introduction.php