Extractions: Much African Culture And Art Reported July 28, 1999 COLUMBUS, Ohio In everything from braided hairstyles to the design of housing settlements, the geometric structures known as fractals permeate African culture. In a new book, an Ohio State University scholar examines the unlikely pairing of this mathematical concept and the culture and art of Africa. "While fractal geometry is often used in high-tech science, its patterns are surprisingly common in traditional African designs," said Ron Eglash, senior lecturer in comparative studies in the humanities. Eglash is author of African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. Eglash said his work suggests that African mathematics is more complex than previously thought. He also says using African fractals in U.S. classrooms may boost interest in math among students, particularly African Americans. He has developed a Web page to help teachers use fractal geometry in the classroom. Fractals are geometric patterns that repeat on ever-shrinking scales. Many natural objects, like ferns, tree branches, and lung bronchial systems are shaped like fractals.
Ron Eglash Eglash, R. African Fractals modern computing and indigenous design. Eglash, R. bamana sand divination recursion in ethnomathematics. http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/ethnic.dir/r4cyb.dir/r4cybh.htm
Extractions: DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT The Race for Cyberspace: Information Technology in the Black Diaspora Barbara Christian's seminal essay, "The race for theory," analyzed the ways in which the academic competition to create a theory of black women's writing had overshadowed the potent theoretical content of the writing itself. Similarly, this essay examines how the hype over application of new information technologies to racialized social problems has overshadowed the potent technological content of the communities themselves. Focusing on the black diaspora, we broaden the category of "information technology" to show how traditions of coding and computation from indigenous African practices and black appropriations of Euro-american technologies have supported, resisted, and fused with the cybernetic histories of the west, and provide a strong source for changes in reconstructing identity, social postition and access to power in communities of the black diaspora. 1) Cyberspace as Savior In the early 1990s the internet was flooded with various versions of the "cyberspace manifesto," most of which contained something like this passage from John Perry Barlow:
Have You Seen Mathematics occurs naturally in peoples lives, as is evident from indepth work, Eglash, R. bamana Sand Divination recursion in ethnomathematics. http://web.nmsu.edu/~pscott/isgem122.htm
Extractions: Volume 12 Number 2 May 1997 Minutes of the ISGEm Meeting Minneapolis, MN, USA, April 19, 1997 Ubi D'Ambrosio calls session to order, and turns meeting over to Joanna Masingila, chair of the ad-hoc organizing committee. Joanna asks for officers' reports: Jim Barta give's treasury report we are well in the black. Larry Shirley gives delegate report Our resolution for an NCTM committee on international affairs was defeated last year, but we may re-present it again next year depending on the NCTM's sub-committee discussion. Rick Scott gives newsletter report newsletter is now available on-line at web.nmsu.edu/~pscott/isgem.htm Ron Eglash gives web site report location is www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/comp/isgem.htm Luis Ortiz-Franco gives constitutional report last year's amendment allows for the creation of regional chapters. Joanna asks for New Business: A suggestion to put a list of members' activities on the web is discussed and found agreeable by all. Meeting is adjourned.
Misconceptions Today We must take notice of the ability of these indigenous people to create new Associations between many of the colonial rulers and the African states http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/misconc.htm
Extractions: TODAY'S MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT AFRICA Incredible @rt Dept ART HOME Program Goals Lesson Plans ... Test Your Knowledge [ Misconceptions Today ] Art of Mali Songhai Empire Senufo Ancestor Dogon Ancestor ... Early History of Africa Background information on Africa Africa . Third Edition. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Martin and O'Meara (1995) dispel any misconceptions one might have about Africa today. They present the reader with an objective perspective on the problems facing Africans today: the diversity, the conflicts, and the changesall a result of Western interference. Africa, more that three times the size of the United States, includes fifty- three very diverse countries and a population of about 700 million people. Africans are divided not only by boundaries, which did not exist prior to colonization, but also by ethnic identities, class distinctions, urban and rural experiences, geographic barriers, and vast distances. Population varies widely (Gabon- one million; Nigeria- 115 million). Ways of life vary dramatically. Some live in cities and work in offices or skyscrapers, buy clothes from department stores and have all of the modern conveniences- yet may travel to the rural areas for traditional festivals, to see healers or to visit extended families. Rural community members may seldom visit the cities, may walk miles for water in the dry season, and listen to transistor radios as they welcome a relative back from graduate studies overseas.
Extractions: ASA News ASEE Prism Academe African American Review ... View all titles in this topic Hot New Articles by Topic Automotive Sports Top Articles Ever by Topic Automotive Sports Bamana: the art of existence in Mali - exhibition preview - various artists, African art, Museum for African Art, New York and Museum Rietberg, Zurich African Arts Winter, 2001 by Jean-Paul Colleyn Laurie Ann Farrell Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with Furl.net. It's free! Save it. The Museum for African Art, New York, and the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, have mounted related but separate exhibitions on the Bamana peoples of Mali. The Museum for African Art's "Bamana: The Art of Existence in Mali" (September 13, 2001-May 19, 2002) is curated by Jean-Paul Colleyn and Catherine De Clippel. Frank Herreman, Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Publications, Museum for African Art, selected approximately 120 artworks from public and private sources in the United States and Belgium; the exhibition also includes 26 black-and-white photographs taken in the field by Catherine De Clippel, a photographer and producer and director of documentary films, and 4 video segments. At this writing, the Milwaukee Art Museum is scheduled to host the exhibition in spring 2003, and other venues are under consideration.
Extractions: ASA News ASEE Prism Academe African American Review ... View all titles in this topic Hot New Articles by Topic Automotive Sports Top Articles Ever by Topic Automotive Sports Baba Wague Diakite: "respect yourself as well as your tradition." - portfolio - artist African Arts Summer, 2001 by Victoria Rovine Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with Furl.net. It's free! Save it. Baba Wague Diakite is an artist who defies categorizationa fact that reveals as much about the limits of artistic categories as it does about Diakite's multiple talents. Both Malian and American, the artist has been a resident of Portland, Oregon, for more than fifteen years. He expresses himself in many media, from ceramics and textiles to storytelling and architectural sculpture. He creates both "high art," made for display in museums and galleries, and "craft," household objects that are made to be used. His work playfully draws together elements associated with "traditional" Malian and "contemporary" American cultures. The quotation marks that surround several of the terms used above draw attention to their provisional nature and to Diakite as an artist whose career demonstrates their essential artificiality. His work grows out of the diversity of his experiences, which place him as much between categories as within them. Though he draws on a cultural heritage of which he is proud, Wague does not seek to express an essential Malian-ness or African-ness but instead his own humanity. In his words: "My work is not tied up with traditional concerns or techniques.... As much as I am proud to introduce a little of my culture through my art, I do not consider my work to be particularly African." In this, Diakite shares the concerns of many contemporary artists from Africa, who seek to transcend the labels by which the art market organizes its categories, too often blocking entry to those whose work is not neatly classifiable.
Ethnomathematics Digital Library (EDL) This report explores the native navigational lore of the Pacific peoples. Cultural group African, Australian Aborigine http://www.ethnomath.org/search/browseResources.asp?type=cultural&id=52
The Oral Tradition - Drumming For African people, dancing is as natural as breathing and the music is always They speak a dialect of bamana, but have maintained (many aspects of) http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/UMS/Drummers/drumming.html
Extractions: (after arriving in Africa for the first time to meet Doudou N'diaye Rose) Styles of playing The styles described here are divided into several groups: Manding and Mbalax, based on the traditional music of the Manding and Wolof peoples and modern African and contemporary Western music. African drumming has heavily influenced by Cuban dance music and western pop. Manding Manding music is the music of the Manding (Mande) group of peoples, who were the inhabitants of the vast Manding empire 13th to 15th century. It stretched from the south of what is now Senegal and Gambia, and included Mali and the west of Guinea as well. Music used to be the exclusive domain of a caste of musicians, the Jalis or griots . Though this is now starting to change, this is still obvious nowadays. There are three main styles, related to a language and people of the same name: Maninka, Bamana (or Bambara) and Mandinka. The last few years, the Wassoulou style from the region of the same name is gaining popularity.
African Art: Aesthetics And Meaning To the bamana people, farming is the most important and noblest profession. The decorative features of West African heddle pulleys devices that hold http://www.lib.virginia.edu/clemons/RMC/exhib/93.ray.aa/Exhibition.html
Extractions: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Klaus, 1981.43.1 To the Bamana people, farming is the most important and noblest profession. At planting time, men of the Chi-Wara association of farmers dance with headresses like these in the fields to honor Chi- Wara, the mythical "farming animal" that taught agriculture to the ancestors of the Bamana. The headdresses, always danced in male and female pairs, depict the antelope-like Chi-Wara and display the ingredients of successful cultivation. The long horns of the male Chi Wara stand for the tall growth of millet; the penis signifies the rooting of this grain. The long ears refer to the cultivators' listening to the songs sung by women who encourage the men while they work in the fields; the open, zigzag pattern in the neck symbolizes the sun's path along the horizon between the two solstices. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward G. Lanpher, 1979.40.l Bamana, Mali Republic
Eglash's African Fractals African Fractals Modern Computing and indigenous Design In traditional Bamanafortunetelling, a divination priest begins by rapidly drawing four http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/special/eglash.african.fractals.html
Extractions: by Dr. Ron Eglash http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.htm The mathematical operation is called addition modulo 2, which simply gives the remainder after division by two. But in this case, the two "words" produced by the priest, each consisting of four odd or even strokes, become the input for a new round of addition modulo 2. In other words, it's a pseudo random-number generator, the same thing computers do when they produce random numbers. It's also a numerical feedback loop, just as fractals are generated by a geometric feedback loop. "Here is this absolutely astonishing numerical feedback loop, which is indigenous," said Eglash. "So you can see the concepts of fractal geometry resonate throughout many facets of African culture." Lawrence Shirley, chairman of the mathematics department at Towson (Md.) University, lived in Nigeria for 15 years and taught at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. He said he's impressed with Eglash's observations of fractal geometry in Africa. "When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet." Eglash said educators also need to rethink the way in which disciplines like African studies have tended to skip over mathematics and related areas.
COMMEMORATING THE AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND IN NEW YORK CITY bamana and Dogon of Mali, and African Americans of the United States. People today who are engaging the site may have roots in these areas, http://www.ijele.com/vol1.1/frohne.html
Extractions: SPIRITUALITY OF SPACE IN CONTEMPORARY ART WORKS Andrea Frohne The New York City African Burial Ground was actively used by enslaved and freed Africans and people of African descent from approximately 1712 until 1790. The cemetery covered five to six acres, in which between 10,000 and 20,000 people were buried, with bodies three layers deep in places. The 1991 unearthing of the Burial Ground has altered historical misconceptions, such as the mistaken belief that virtually no slave trade existed in the north. Few realized that during most of the eighteenth-century, New York City held the largest number of enslaved blacks outside of South Carolina. In 1790 for instance, slaves were owned by about 40% of the white households around New York City, with blacks comprising nearly one-quarter of the urban population. In the late seventeenth and entire eighteenth-century, the African Burial Ground was located on the periphery of the town so that funerals were performed beyond the scrutiny and surveillance of Europeans. It was Trinity Church who perhaps prompted use of the site, although it may have been in use prior to the Church's ordering in October 1697, "...that after the expiration of four weeks from the date here of no Negroes be buried within the bounds and limits of the church yard of Trinity Church."
AFRICAN STUDIES PART I provides an overview of the bamana people and their philosophical and In the field of African art Pascal Imperato s publications on bamana arts http://www.holmesandmeier.com/titles/imperato.html
Extractions: introduction by Patrick R. McNaughton The Bamana people are known for their rich artistic traditions, including the creation of masks, statues, door locks, headdresses, and ritual and utilitarian objects: Their door locks are among the most remarkable of all African art. Sculpted of wood in a rich variety of forms, they depict mythological and historical figures, social events, and representational figurescrocodiles, lizards, tortoises, owls, bats, butterflies, humans. Known as konbarabara , these exquisite locks were once presented to young women at the time of their marriage and affixed to the doors of their new homes. The beauty of the carvings and the ingenuity of the locking systems present a fascinating study of this unusual art form. This unique publication presents for the first time in the United States a comprehensive survey of Bamana lock forms: Fifty-three Bamana locks and four Bamana doors with locks are displayed along with ten Dogon and two Bwa locks (both ethnic groups live in Mali). This volume is divided into three parts: PART I provides an overview of the Bamana people and their philosophical and spiritual beliefs.
African Film Contexts Since 1969, Fespaco has been featuring indigenous African fulllength films This is the premier festival for people of African descent worldwide. http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/afrfilmcontexts.htm
Extractions: Links and article references for background on African film Contexts for Afrique, je te plumerai for Keita: l'heritage du griot for Yeelen (see also descriptions of COCC 's African film holdings Fespaco (Pan-African Film Festival held biannually in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) Bibliography for further study CONTEXTS for Keita: The Heritage of the Griot LINKS: The Legend of Sundiata
In Praise Of The Word: African Oral Arts Steward and artisan of the word, crystallizer of the people s collective of indigenous and Western musical forms have produced such uniquely African http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/CoursePack/praiseword.htm
Extractions: Works Cited IN PRAISE OF THE WORD In many traditional African cultures, oral arts are professionalized: the most accomplished storytellers and praise singers are initiates ( griots or bards , who have mastered many complex verbal, musical, and memory skills after years of specialized training. This training often includes a strong spiritual and ethical dimension required to control the special forces believed to be released by the spoken/sung word in oral performances. These occult powers and primal energies of creation and destruction are called nyama by Mande peoples of Western Africa, for example, and their jeli, or griots, are a subgroup of the artisan professions that the Mande designate nyamakalaw nyama-handlers Following a traditional griot performance of a spiritually-charged oral epic like Sundjiata , a Malian audience might ritualistically chant !Ka nyama bo! which could be translated something like
Extractions: Echoing Images Couples in African Sculpture The Metropolitan Museum of Art February 10 to September 5, 2004 Commemorative Couple, Vezo peoples, Madagascar, 19th-20th Century, wood, male figure is 22 7/8 inches high, the female figure is 17 11/16 inches high, private collection By Carter B. Horsley In contrast with the stupendous and gargantuan exhibition on Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring of 2004, this intimate show of "Echoing Images, Couples in African Sculpture" at the same institution demonstrates the maxim that small can often be better. A themed rather than chronological show, it is not encyclopedic but the few objects on display are mostly of extremely high and memorable quality. The finest "couple" in the exhibition is unquestionably a 19th-20th Century commemorative couple, Vezo peoples, from Madagascar. The male wood figure is 22 7/8 inches high and the female figure is 17 11/16 inches high and both come from a private collection. Somewhat eroded, these figures are remarkably graceful and have quite lyrical and almost Oriental poses. These world-class figures are exquisite. Commemorative couple, Sakalava peoples, Madagascar, 19th-20th Century, wood, male figure is 70 7/8 inches high, female figure is 61 7/16 inches high, private collection
Juilliard | The Juilliard Journal Online The bamana people of Mali live in a harsh environment; therefore they have Although Europeans and Americans have long appreciated African art for its http://www.juilliard.edu/update/journal/greta_1101.html
Extractions: Komo mask: warakun. Koulikoro Region. Wood, animal horns, pig hairs, fiber, pignment. (The Museum for African Art) During these troubled times, one of the most stirring shows you can see is at the Museum for African Art in SoHo. This exquisitely designed museum has consistently received rave reviews for its exhibitions. The current one, featuring the art of the Bamana, is no exception, filled as it is with beauty, power, energy, and hope. Particularly timely for all of us dedicated to the arts, it begins with a wall panel explaining that the arts of Africa are considered to ensure healing. Join us, as together, we begin to heal, the text continues. And, indeed, as you go through the museum, you will find yourself uplifted, inspired, and cheered in both mind and spirit. Equally relevant for us is the holistic attitude towards artwork. In West Africa, art is at the very core of society, and the show includes dance, music, theater, puppetry, field photography, and video footage, as well as art objects. During the dance, when viewed in profile, the Ci-wara headdress attains its aesthetic perfection. Dyele, 1987. (Photo by Catherine De Clippel)
Visit Mali - A Virtual Guide To The Republic Of Mali Ethnic groups Manding, Mande (Bambara or bamana, Malinke, Sarakole, Information about business and investment in the African countries within the http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/mali.htm
Extractions: Beside a country profile with facts and figures, the page contains links to sources which provide you with all the information you need to know about this West African nation, e.g.: official web sites of Mali, addresses of Malian embassies, country guides for travel and tourism and more information like maps and local newspapers from Mali. The Sudanese Republic and Senegal became independent of France in 1960 as the Mali Federation. When Senegal withdrew after only a few months, the Sudanese Republic was renamed Mali. Rule by dictatorship was brought to a close in 1991 with a transitional government, and in 1992 when Mali's first democratic presidential election was held. Since his reelection in 1997, President KONARE has continued to push through political and economic reforms and to fight corruption. In 1999 he indicated he would not run for a third term.
Book Review The American Historical Review, 110.2 The In africa, as everywhere else in the world, power and authority are represented, Allman is quick to note that people in the stateless societies of http://www.historycoop.org/journals/ahr/110.2/br_179.html
Extractions: Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers. If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can: Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review. Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review. Instititutions can: Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
TDS; Passports, Visas, Travel Documents Malians enjoy a relative harmony rare in African states. Ethnic groupsManding (Bambara or bamana, Malinke) 52%, Fulani 11%, Saracolé 7%, Mianka 4%, http://www.traveldocs.com/ml/people.htm
Book Review The American Historical Review, 105.2 The People are not the Same Leprosy and Identity in TwentiethCentury Mali. (SocialHistory of africa.) Portsmouth Heinemann. 1998. Pp. xi, 220. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/105.2/br_156.html
Extractions: Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers. If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can: Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review. Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review. Instititutions can: Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
