University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

A Return to the Stone Age: Rock Art as Joyful Information Practice during COVID-19

Tulloch, Bonnie J.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121611

Description

Title
A Return to the Stone Age: Rock Art as Joyful Information Practice during COVID-19
Author(s)
Tulloch, Bonnie J.
Issue Date
2022
Keyword(s)
  • stone age
  • joy of information
  • COVID-19
Abstract
This paper examines the way COVID-19-related rock art challenges popular assumptions about the information society and the digital age. Adopting a constructivist-based humanities approach, it explores the significance of rock art as an information practice that emerged in response to the pandemic. Specifically, this personal case study reflects on the way rock art encouraged people to practice "joyful attention" and "kind attention" during the 2020 spring restrictions in British Columbia. Analyzing the possible values associated with different rock designs, I suggest that this joy-oriented information practice presents an alternative narrative of the present time, one that is ultimately more positive in its representation of the world than the negative, technologically driven discourses that tend to dominate cultural narratives of information.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 70 (4). Spring 2022
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
eng
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2022.0016
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2022 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 70 (4) Spring 2022: Joy of Information [Restricted Access] PRIMARY
Library Trends 70 (4) Spring 2022: Joy of Information [Restricted Access]. Edited by Jenna Hartel and Hailey Siracky.