Landscape perception and visual metaphor in Warlpiri world view.

摘要

Landscape is culturally constructed phenomena that synthesizes divergent aspects of perception and experience. Among Warlpiri Aboriginals, the landscape is symbolically ambiguous, and encoded within it are multifarious aspects of knowledge, power, and identity. The structure and meaning of the Warlpiri landscape is partially flexible, enabling individuals to become architects of their own existential situations.;Each Warlpiri is affiliated with mythologically defined geographical regions, or 'countries'. The notion of 'country' is at the core of Warlpiri reality, and embraces politics, economics, Dreamings, and social relationships. Country mediates between the mythological and human realms, and Warlpiri experience it as an ontological extension of the 'self'. Identity is projected onto the landscape such that Warlpiri individuals exist only in relation to places.;Graphic symbolism plays a critical role in the creation and articulation of landscape. Warlpiri art, like the Warlpiri landscape, is ambiguous and polysemic in that it contains multiple meanings and can be understood on various levels depending on the knowledge and status of the interpreter. Through multivalent designs, Warlpiri transform the palpable landscape by representing it in abstraction, and they transform the intangible environment through representationalism.;The landscape and graphic symbolism are visual metaphors which encode and portray otherwise invisible aspects of Warlpiri reality. These metaphors enable Warlpiri to define and verify metaphysical principles of existence. Warlpiri symbolism conforms to the land while simultaneously transforming it. Through a synergistic merging of landscape and art, Warlpiri articulate their experiences with the world. Warlpiri metaphors are both the means and the end to a culturally unified construction of the material and spiritual worlds.