The TRIS Proposal
TRIS is Traditional Ritual Information System, a New Media approach to supporting the study of Symbolic and Visual Anthropology. In Africa, chiefs and their traditional institution of governance are held in high regard and they are an accepted media for social, political and economic unity. In Ghana, for example, chiefs and the chieftaincy institution operate alongside civil governance. During annual durbars such as the FETU AFAHYE FESTIVAL of the Ogua people, in the Cape-Coast region, tourists and other visitors capture unfolding events on a variety of memory banks.
These visual and auditory memory snippets in the form of photos, audio-visual anthology and performances are experienced without the consideration of what they collectively stand for, and how each has antecedent to cultures far and near. Several meanings are allocated to them which may include exotic culture, traditional authentic performances and other non-western interpretation. This project is a new media approach to interpreting images of RITUALS as captured from Ghanaian Chieftaincy and their relation to other world cultures.
Selected Rituals and their connections
- Masquerade to Catholicism
- Libation to Holland Dutch Schnapps
- Asafo Companies to British secret services
- Ewe Couture and German Norddeutsche Mission
Sample Connectivity
The example below shows how a seemingly ordinary event, a PERFORMANCE ritual, carries several elements within the activity itself. See figure 2 for details. An ordinary image from a festival shows a chief decked in herbs, being carried in a palanquin designed with modern graphic design tools and carrying symbolic messages. This example highlights aspects such as Architecture, Herbs, Material Culture, Adinkra Symbols, Graphic design and Advertisement.
TRIS Original Concept
My name is Salvador Lawrence d'Souza. This project is based on my Masters Thesis. The TRIS project explores what goes into the aesthetics of non-western cultural performance in the process of achieving visual-authenticity. TRIS tries to retrace Ghanaian rituals and how they are inter-connected with other cultures and economies. I attempt to track different areas of Visual, Auditory and Material culture in body-art, kente-cloth, adinkra symbols, jewellery, dance steps, drumming and music AND traditional forms of communication.
