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Simon Carroll
Kecskemet
Jamaica
Keramika English
Keramika Cymraeg
Telling Tales
Marcus Thomas
Love or Money
Telling Tales With Technology
GRAHAM McLARENSenior Lecturer, Dept. of Ceramics
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| Graham McLaren raised the question of whether what was on the Internet could be called 'oral' history. If in the near future the Internet can be accessed through speech rather than the keyboard will we need to re-define written as opposed to oral language? Already the Internet is being used as a space in which a ceramic artist can create a seemingly three- dimensional vessel without the need of clay. Two thousand potters worldwide regularly join in discussions on just one site, ClayArt which covers topics from technical problems to aesthetic considerations. Is this a forum for oral history? The informal nature of the conversations can result in huge amounts of information and opinion being stored, but so far it does not seem to be being used in research. Potters are using the web sites to talk to fellow potters but they are also producing their own ‘home pages’ to entice potential reviewers and customers. These potters have only the written word with which to describe their work and encourage the reader to take the time to download the images of their work. This forces the conclusion that the written word, or in the future the spoken word, is having to take priority over the pot itself. One typical site of a potter in Portugal showed [by clicking on the relevant icon] that over eighteen thousand people had called up the potter's home page in the course of a three month period. How the oral historian might begin to utilise the huge volume of material was the main issue raised by this paper. |
Research Introduction
Simon
Carroll Interview | Kecskemet | Jamaica | Keramika
English / Cymraeg | Telling
Tales With Technology | Close
Relations Marcus Thomas at Aberystwyth | For
Love or Money
