I'm following up on Elena and Sue's exchanges: for those who didn't read my message about reading musical scores as a writing system, the key thing I wanted to point out was knowing how to put intervals of different lengths in a sequence. In music, it is the duration and pitch of a note.
What about the equivalent to duration and pitch of a note in lace? the place, tension, and angle of the thread? Let's take the metaphor seriously: being able to read the prickings of a lace pattern is like being able to read a music score In this analogy a design or a photograph of the finished lace is like listening to a recording of the piece one is learning how to play or sight-reading. Ethnomusicologists spend all their time in the field observing and thinking about how musicians in cultures without musical notation learn to play the most intricate, complex music. Surely this is the same for lacemakers who do not use diagrams! The way one learns is by memorizing small bits as units, and then learning to put them together in chunks and then learning how to memorize long sequences of these units Why couldn't this be the way for lacemaking? - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
