Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

In my research I investigate the “Shi Image’, a meta-image and a representation of the Cosmos found in various forms in Ancient China. The image embodies the basic logic of Chinese philosophy and offers the basis for an understanding of the links between art forms that demonstrate a shared cosmological world view.’ I examine the archive of such images that originated in the Han Dynasty. I start with the hazy and fragmented understanding of the Cosmos to be found in the late Neolithic period in China up to the beginnings of the Han Dynasty, before the emergence of the Shi Image. I look at various forms of textual inscription, including hieroglyphs and marks on tortoise shells, known as ‘oracle bones’, as well as traces of cosmology in myths and legends, maps and star charts. I then look at the cosmological image. This is an under-researched topic and at the heart of my project. There are comparatively few examples of such images, and they are found in different forms of cultural artefact, studied by disparate disciplines. One of my aims is to demonstrate the commonalities in these disparate images and show how they manifest a particular visual logic, manifested in various forms, including planar images and stereo images, and how, in turn, these offer representations of concepts of space and time and cosmological understanding.