Why Make Art in the Dark? | Hacker News Reader

Why Make Art in the Dark?

aeon.co

40 pointsapollinaire21 comments

Having slept rough in the middle of London for a short while, I can attest to the value of having somewhere safe to sleep. In my case it was a large, dense bush in the middle of Hyde Park (which I can still locate 40 years later on Google maps).

If I had an inaccessible cave to sleep in, I would have jumped at the chance.

Regarding the methodology they employed, I like it. 3d model of the unpainted cave surface, with directional lighting and eye tracker... A very sincere approximation of what the original artists experienced.

One thing that has not yet been mentioned is the loss of colour and detail information (high frequency features) that comes with low light conditions. This natturaly filters out distracting detail and distracting colour. Many painter's used to (and still) employ such work conditions precisely for this reason.

I once went into the loft space of my house, and found that in 1949 the guy pointing the brick chimney stack had written his name on it.

How many times in the last 75 years has that name been seen? Probably only a handful. That guy is probably dead now, but his name will be on my chimney for decades to come.

Maybe these people had the same instinct? Crawl somewhere deep and rarely seen and leave a mark. They probably also left marks everywhere else, but they're gone now.

I kind of like the longevity of things like this. We have a centarian home and the basement has some kids' names and ages etched into the concrete from the earliest years of the house. When we were pouring new concrete during a repair, we added our kid's footprints and the date. No one will ever see them unless they tear down the structure, but it's interesting to think someone might find them in a hundred years and feel the same way we did about the basement names.

Survivor bias. In Europe, art painted on external walls or cliffs, would not survive elements for 30k years. Caves have extremely stable microclima (humidity, temperature, UV light exposure). In modern times paintings are endangered by breath and heat emissions from visitors!!

I can not believe "educated" people would not come with this solution, and instead have to invent this spiritual stuff.

Exactly! The article is asking the wrong question. Ancient people would have been painting and marking all suitable surfaces in their environment, including each other. Just like modern day graffiti artists (and tatooists) do. But only those paintings and markings sheltered from weathering and decay have survived.

Many caves with art in are extremely inaccessible. You need to explain why someone would risk their life and crawl through tiny openings in the pitch black to reach a specific location in order to make their art.

I can not believe that educated people think you can explore and explain human culture without considering "spiritual" stuff.

If you’re living in a cave entrance a lifetime of exploration is very different than what we think of as spelunking. Add generations of kids to the mix and little is going to remain unknown and unexplored.

No need for spiritual explanations for something that mundane.

People do seemingly crazy, risky things for seemingly innane reasons today. Why would ancient humans be different in that regard?

Yeah modern people go to extreme lengths to do the most out of reach graffiti

https://www.observatoriodoespacopublico.com/post/olhares-uso...

Caves evolve, perhaps there was a landslide that covered old entrance, and that is the only reason why paintings survived. I do not believe paintings would survive in open easily accessible cave. Just the urine from bats...

As for spirituality, people 30k years ago very quite sophisticated. They had paintings, music, maps, religion, porn... But entire population of Europe was like 100k people. And there was no need to crawl into one way death trap, when they had 1000km^2 to explore!

You're just restating the parent comment's point.

Assume that prehistoric people drew pictures all over the place, which, given the inclinations of modern humans seems to be true. Then assume that every easily accessible place is likely to have its art erased over overwritten by later humans. Also a reasonable assumption.

What's left? The only ancient cave art we find is the stuff that's highly inaccessible.

In other words, the cave art we see today doesn't reflect the behavior of the original artists as much as it reflects the behavior of later humans that would intercede.

Consider this for a while longer yourself. Even if many such paintings have been made in easily accessible locations and they do not survive for this reason, the fact remains that more than a few cave paintings have turned up in locations that are very inaccessible and were likely also very inaccessible at the time they were made. The paintings appear to be complex enough that they cannot be discarded as merely graffiti by people who found themselves in an inaccessible location by accident and wanted to leave a mark.

Survivor bias explains why these paintings still exist. It does not explain why they were made.

But we agree.

I am saying people made thousands, most likely millions paintings like that. Only very small fraction survived.

But there is no need for some extra ordinary explanation like "artists were high-status shamans".

I paint random stuff like rocks in my garden.

Regular acrylic paints degrade after a few years of regular exposure. I hope some of my work survives and someone thinks I was a high status shaman, but more importantly I know that little children walking by have been delighted by a rock painted like a bug. It's the little things.

> I can not believe "educated" people would not come with this solution, and instead have to invent this spiritual stuff.

Why would you think the Ice Age world would be less spiritual than today? Seems in our modern, "educated" world there's plenty of people believing in some form of god.

> As you read the words in this article, your eyes are rapidly flicking between different letters, as your visual system is making educated guesses about what each of the words says. This means that lteters can appaer out of oredr, but you can still read them with relative ease.

Nitpick: your eyes don't flick "between different letters" but between different words. That's why "lteters can appaer out of oredr". This is what it means to be fluent in reading a language. A learner will still have to go letter-by-letter on most words because they're not yet used to the word "shapes". Once you reach fluency, you stop looking at the individual letters and recognize words based on their shape and position in the text (i.e. you might read things that aren't there but you're accustomed to seeing there if the shape and position is similar).

> you might read things that aren't there

Hence the meme:

    What i if told you,
    You the read first line wrong,
    Same the with second,
    And also the third!

If you want to put a positive spin on it, the brain is really good at error correction.

If not, the brain is really bad at paying attention to details it considers unimportant.

Because that was home? The caves provided shelter for predators and the elements, and a fixed place for a fire. So sitting around when there was spare time, of course one would scribble on the walls.

Also, survivorship bias.

Many of these places weren't homes. The vast majority of prehistoric people did not live in caves. And many places with art are nearly inaccessible, and completely dark.

Even if most didn't live in caves, if enough of them spent enough time there they would surely end up painting something. And caves are good places for paintings to survive.

I'm not even sure one could separate religious and non-religious purposes. I think there was much less of a distinction. Even in ancient Rome, the gods were involved in many everyday activities, it would surely have been even more so in the Stone Age

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