SCULPTURE AS AN ENVIRONMENT IN PUBLIC SPACE I–B

• Main Authors: Myrdene Anderson, Rael Artel
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Culture; Nature; Semiotics; Locations IV 2; saami
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.121.31; http://www.eki.ee/km/locations/abstracts.pdf

The semiosic experience of ‘place ’ reflects how physical location intersects with, and is informed by, biologic and individual habit emerging through time. The various tempos of habit and societal lifeways thicken the threads making up the fabric of location. The paradigmatic warp, like harmony, lies in wait for each insertion of woof, for each extraction of melody. Some units and scales of analysis may be brief or serendipitous, some enduring or repetitious. The nomadic experience distinguishes itself at any unit or scale. Nomads do not wander aimlessly, but typically follow seasonal trajectories, scalloped by inspired digressions. Taking Saami reindeer breeders as a case in point, one can observe that the reindeer migration routes – themselves a synthesis of the biologic, the geographic, and the sociocultural – are mimicked by mobility of persons and objects at other scales of smaller spaces and abbreviated time periods. While people, their immediate possessions, and the reindeer move about the landscape seasonally and periodically within the season, their every moment in any setting involves motion. Individuals of all ages move about the room, in and out of the tent, and from task to pastime to emergency. At the same time, furniture, tools, and clothing exhibit mobility as well, transported by people, pets, and weather from place to place. ‘The carpet, too, is moving under you ’ (Country Joe and the Fish) might be the theme for this wideangled interrogation of Saami motion.