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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2020
Digital tools offer new possibilities for visual research, and such tools can provide methods for revitalising our understanding of the field of culture. Despite the importance of the visual as an element of culture, it is only in the last decade that the visual as a phenomenon of seeing has been a major feature of theoretical and methodological approaches to Southeast Asia. The long traditions of art history, anthropology and related fields in Southeast Asian studies have hitherto been focused on empirical documentation. In studying one aspect of the visual archive created by the polymath Gregory Bateson during his partnership with Margaret Mead, I will draw on methodologies that have their origins in Bateson's writings. These methodologies find fresh conditions in digital environments, in ways that allow us to bring into play a variety of theories of the visible.
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3 For example, P. Serenbetz, ‘Reading a painting’, Clinton Public Schools, https://sites.google.com/a/clintonpublic.net/serenbetzp/reading-a-painting (accessed 28 Mar. 2017).
4 Mark Hobart, ‘Texte est un con’, in Contexts and levels: Anthropological essays on hierarchy, ed. R.H. Barnes, D. de Copet and R.J. Parkin (JASO Occasional Paper 4, Oxford, 1985), p. 50. Available at https://www.criticalia.org/theory (accessed 29 Mar. 2017).
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20 Bateson, ‘Style, grace and information’, p. 101. The original article was written in 1969 for the conference organised by Forge, appearing in Primitive art and society in 1973.
21 Ibid. Note that Bateson uses the old colonial form of spelling current at the time of his fieldwork, but also misspells Jatasura's name (as ‘Djatisoera’).
22 Ibid., p. 105.
23 Ibid., p. 120.
24 Ibid., p. 125.
25 Geertz, Hildred, Images of power: Balinese paintings made for Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994)Google Scholar, gives the total of 1,288, although this does not include, inter alia, a set of works on cloth acquired for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), nor some other works which ended up in the Library of Congress.
26 Jacknis, Ira, ‘Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali: Their use of photography and film’, Cultural Anthropology 3, 2 (1988): 160–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Bateson, Gregory and Mead, Margaret, Balinese character: A photographic analysis (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1942)Google Scholar.
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29 Geertz, Hildred and Togog, Ida Bagus Madé, Tales from a charmed life: A Balinese painter reminisces (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 2 (although there must have been other newspapers, since some works date to 1939, as she points out in a footnote).
30 The Institute for Intercultural Studies, http://www.interculturalstudies.org/resources.html (accessed 26 July 2017), finished in 2009 after putting Bateson and Mead's material in the Library of Congress in the public domain. The work of continuing Bateson's legacy is being carried out by the Bateson Ideas Group, http://batesonideagroup.org/ (accessed 26 July 2017), which has taken over the rights to his individual work.
31 Geertz, Hildred, Storytelling in Bali (Leiden: Brill, 2016)Google Scholar; the other books are Images of power; The life of a Balinese temple: Artistry, imagination and history in a peasant village (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004); and Geertz and Togog, Tales from a charmed life.
32 As well as venues in the United States, this exhibition toured to the Agung Rai Museum of Art (ARMA) in Bali, the Australian Museum in Sydney, and the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan.
33 On Bateson's private ownership of the paintings, see H. Geertz, Storytelling in Bali, p. 39; letter cited by Mohan, Urmila, Fabricating power with Balinese textiles (New York City: Bard Graduate Center 2018), p. 27Google Scholar.
34 Some artworks had already been given away to friends and family at the end of the 1930s.
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36 Initial funding was from an ARC Linkage Grant held with the Australian Museum, beginning in 2009, with funding from a Singapore-based private collector, and the Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney. Peter Worsley and Siobhan Campbell were co-researchers, and Stan Florek was a key facilitator in providing data from the Museum. Other private collectors provided data, as did public institutions. First AMNH, followed by the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, and the Ethnographic Museum, Leiden (since merged into The National Museum of World Cultures). Hildred Geertz provided her photographs and data, as did other independent researchers. Working on Bali with artist-researcher Bruce Granquist, we gained permission for collaboration from the major public body concerned with cultural collections, the Bali Culture Service (Dinas Kebudayaan Bali), and thus able to incorporate the documentation of two key institutions, the Museum Bali and the Balinese Art Centre. Private institutions in Bali have also provided supporting material, especially ARMA, Neka Museum, Museum Puri Lukisan, Museum Pasifika and Nyoman Gunarsa Museum. See Campbell, Siobhan, ‘Anthony Forge in Bali: The making of a museum collection’, Visual Anthropology 27, 3 (2014): 248–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vickers, Adrian, Balinese art: Paintings and drawings of Bali 1800–2010 (Singapore: Tuttle, 2012)Google Scholar. See also Leo Haks and Gael Newton, Haks collection introduction, National Gallery of Australia, https://nga.gov.au/HAKS/ (accessed 20 July 2017), describing Haks’ collection of colonial photographs.
37 See ‘About Heurist’, http://aclhs-web-pro-1.ucc.usyd.edu.au/heurist/h3-ij/help/index.html?FindOutMoreAboutHeurist.html, dating to 2013 (accessed 29 June 2017).
38 Stephen Hayes did the initial work on project design. Essential programming work was carried out by Steve White. Research assistants included Safrina Thristiawati and James Watson, who also did development work before Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan took over this key role.
39 The Virtual Museum of Balinese Painting, www.balipaintings.org. An initial version of the public database was developed by Stephen Hayes and Ireneusz Golka. Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan succeeded Watson as the main research assistant and took a major role in the development of the Virtual Museum. Due to internal restructuring, the main design role was taken over by Ian Johnson, working with Artem Osmakov as programmer. The initial version of the Virtual Museum was static and required considerable input for updating. Sastrawan devised a new form of the website, one which incorporates dynamic publishing directly from the underlying Heurist version. The title was suggested by our Singapore collector partner.
40 See Mead Papers, N27, folder 3 (list of paintings from the exhibition) 6 and 7 (card file catalogues of the paintings), and O4, folder 5, which also has annotated copies of the list of exhibition works. The principal textual material is in N25 and N26, except for the texts from Ida Bagus Togog's dream works, which are documented in N24, folder 7.
41 Whitelaw, Mitchell, ‘Generous interfaces for digital cultural collections’, DHQ Digital Humanities Quarterly 9, 1 (2015)Google Scholar. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/1/000205/000205.html (last accessed 20 July 2017).
42 Whitelaw, ‘Generous interfaces’, pp. 1–3.
43 Centre for Australian Art, Australian Prints and Printmaking, National Gallery of Australia, http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/ (last accessed 20 July 2017).
44 Asian Art Archive, ‘Explore the bibliography’, http://aaabibliography.org/explore/ (last accessed 20 July 2017).
45 Nanyang Technological University, https://www.aungsoeillustrations.org/ (last accessed 23 Aug. 2020).
46 Rijks Studio, https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio (last accessed 20 July 2017).
47 Whitelaw, ‘Generous interfaces’, p. 35.
48 Ibid., p. 36.
49 New York Public Library, Public Domain Visualization, http://publicdomain.nypl.org/pd-visualization/ (accessed 21 July 2017).
50 National Gallery of Australia, http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/explore/ (accessed 21 July 2017).
51 H. Geertz, Storytelling in Bali, p. 43, says this work was not numbered, but my check of Bateson's original records while inputting data into Heurist shows that it was.
52 B152, depicting the Bawang story (Virtual Museum of Balinese Painting, Ida Bagus Made Jatasura, https://bit.ly/3hsQQsv), is in the Library of Congress.
53 Information from H. Geertz, Images of power, together with Höhn, Klaus, Reflections of faith: The history of painting in Batuan 1834–1994 (Wijk en Aalburg: Pictures Publishing, 1997)Google Scholar, and my own fieldwork in Batuan in 1981 and 1983, and subsequent regular visits to the village.
54 H. Geertz, Storytelling in Bali, p. 7.
55 Ibid., p. 44. Bateson's notes explain that he photographed and filmed the making of this work.
56 See also H. Geertz, Images of power, and Vickers, Adrian, ‘Gusti Madé Deblog: Artistic manifestations of change in Bali’, RIMA: Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 14, 2 (1980): 1–47Google Scholar.
57 Bateson, ‘Style, grace and information’, p. 118.
58 Ibid., p. 105.
59 Rodríguez-Ortega, Nuria, ‘Digital art history: The questions that need to be asked’, Visual Resources: An International Journal on Images and their Uses, special issue: ‘Digital Art History’, 35, 1–2 (2019): 9; DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2019.1553832CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Ibid.
