Visual methods and the study of Balinese art collections

Abstract

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.