TPO 17 Conversation 1
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a student and a professor.
Professor
OK, let' s see. Right, Modern Stagings of a Shakespearian Classic. Well, like I told you last week, I think that's a great topic for you paper. So the title would be something like ... uh ...
Student
I am not really sure, probably something like 20thcentury stagings of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Professor
Yes, I like that. Straightforward and to the point. So how is the research going?
Student
Well, that's what I came to talk to you about. I was wondering if you happen to have a copy of the Peter Brook production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in your video collection. I've been looking for it everywhere and I am having a really hard time tracking it down.
Professor
That's because it doesn't exist.
Student
You mean in your collection ? Or at all?
Professor
I mean at all. That particular production was never filmed or recorded.
Student
Oh no. I had no idea. From what I read, that production, like, it influenced every other production of the play that came after it. So I just assumed it had been filmed or videotaped.
Professor
Oh, It definitely was a landmark production. And it's not like it ran for just a week, but either it was never filmed or if it was the film's been lost. And it' s ironic because there's even a film about the making of the production, but none of the production itself.
Student
So now what do I do? If there is no video.
Professor
Well, think about it. This is the most important 20thcentury staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, right?
Student
But how can I write about Brook's interpretation of the play if I can't see his production.
Professor
Just because there's no recording doesn't mean you can't figure out how it influenced other productions.
Student
Yeah, I guess there's enough material around, but it will be a challenge.
Professor
True. But think about it, you are writing about dramatic arts, the theater, and that 's the nature of theater, isn't it?
Student
You mean because it is live, when the performance is finished ...
Professor
That's it. Unless it' s filmed, it's gone. But that doesn't mean we can't study it. And of course some students in this class are writing about productions in the 19thcentury, there are no videos of those. You know, one of the challenges for people who study theater is to find way of talking about something that 's really so transient, about something that, in a sense, doesn't exist.
TPO 17 Lecture 1
Art History(Prehistoric Art Dating)
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.
Professor
Good morning, ready to continue our review of prehistoric art? Today, we will be covering the Upper Paleolithic Period, which I am roughly defining as the period from 35,000 to 8,000 BC. A lot of those cave drawings you have all seen come from this period. But we are also be talking about portable works of art, things that could be carried around from place to place. Here is one example.
This sculpture is called the Lady with the Hood1, and it was carved from ivory, probably a mammoth’s tusk. Its age is a bit of a mystery. According to one source, it dates from 22,000 BC. But other sources claimed it has been dated closer to 30,000 BC. Amy?
Amy
Why don’t we know the exact date when this head was made?
Professor
That’s a fair question. We are talking about prehistory here. So obviously the artists didn’t put a signature or a date on anything they did. So how do we know when this figure was carved?
Tom
Last semester I took an archaeology class and we spent a lot time on, studying ways to date things. One technique I remember was using the location of an object to date it, like how deep it was buried.
Professor
That would be Stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is used for dating portable art. When archaeologists are digging at a site, they make very careful notes about which stratum(strata), which layer of earth they find things in. And, you know, the general rule is that the oldest layers are at the lowest level. But this only works if the site hasn’t been touched, and the layers are intact. A problem with this dating method is that an object could have been carried around, used for several generations before it was discarded. So it might be much older than the layer or even the site where it was found. The stratification technique gives us the minimum age of an object, which isn’t necessarilly its true age. Tom, in your archaeology class, did you talk about radiocarbon dating?
Tom
Yeah, we did. That had to do with chemical analysis, something to do with measuring the amount of radiocarbon that’s left in organic stuff. Because we know how fast radiocarbon decays, we can figure out the age of the organic material.
Professor
The key word there is organic. Is art made of organic material?
Tom
Well, you said the lady with the hood was carved out of ivory. That ’s organic.
Professor
Absolutely. Any other examples?
Amy
Well, when they did those cave drawings. Didn’t they use, like chacoal or maybe colors, dyes made from plants?
Professor
Fortunately, they did, at least some of the time. So it turns out that radiocarbon dating works for a lot of prehistoric art. But again there’s a problem. This technique
destroys what it analyzes, so you have to chip off bits of the object for testing.
Obviously we are reluctant to do that in some cases. And apart from that, there’s another problems. The date tells you the age of the material, say, a bone or a tree, the object is made from, but not the date when the artist actually created it. So, with
radiocarbon dating, we get the maximum possible age for the object, but it could be younger. Ok, let’ s say our scientific analysis has produced an age range. Can we narrow it down?
Amy
Could we look for similar styles or motives? You know, try to find things common to one time period.
Professor
We do that all the time. And when we see similiarities in pieces of art, we assume some connection in time or place. But is it possible that we could be imposing our own values on that analysis?
Tom
I am sorry. I don’t get your point.
Professor
Well, we have all kinds of pre-conceived ideas about how artistic styles develop. For example, a lot of people think the presence of details demonstrates that the work was done by a more sophisticated artist. While a lack of detail suggests a primitive style. But trends in art in the last century or so certainly challenge that idea. Don’t get me wrong though, analyzing the styles of prehistoric art can help dating them.
But we need to be careful with the idea that artistic development occurs in a straight line, from simple to complex representations.
Amy
What you are saying is, I mean, I get the feeling that this is like a legal process, like building a legal case, the more pieces of evidence we have, the closer we get to the truth.
Professor
Great analogy. And now you can see why we don’t have an exact date for our sculpture, the lady with the hood.
