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Humans' relationship with stone was the focus of a recent gathering of minds for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

"There is something about stone that calls forth the desire to touch it, and to shape it with our desires and emotions," said Professor Susan Broomhall, acting Director of the Centre for the History of Emotions , based at The University of Western Australia.

"Those desires can take different forms, from Aboriginal rock art, medieval cathedrals, stone memorials or diamond engagement rings.  Stone is a feature of many natural landscapes, and the history of our relationship with stone is a significant part of the history of emotions."

Experts from a variety of disciplines gathered at the University of Melbourne for ‘Hearts and Stones: A Collaboratory on Emotion, Stone and Temporality'.

"Collaboratories are designed to bring the expertise of researchers from different disciplines together and to bear on a challenging area of current scholarship about emotions," Professor Broomhall said.

In his presentation, "I can get no history from [them]": The Strange Cases of London Stone and the Stone of Scone, Associate Professor Tom Prendergast (College of Wooster, Ohio; Chair of English) traced the differing emotional resonances generated by the Stone of Scone and London Stone, said to be the ‘heart of London'.

Human emotional responses to stone may conjure up images of King Arthur drawing his sword from the stone, but also include a seemingly age-old desire for humans to place their mark on stone, Professor Prendergast said.

For example, what range of emotions governs the act of engraving initials, graffiti, or supplementary artwork onto the stone monuments of pre-modern Europe or indigenous rock art? What varied emotional responses do we have to these interventions and why?

Professor Mark Burry (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University; Professor of Innovation (Spatial Information Architecture), an architect who has been working on Gaudi's Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona for the last thirty years, spoke of the Catalonian architect as an example of someone who conveyed his passion through stone. Gaudi devoted his life to depicting the life of Christ in the design of his building, which also continues pre-modern traditions of architecture and their emotional meanings.

"Of course we always consider the emotional impact of our buildings, but I don't think we can claim the expertise of the cultural take.  To take stone from the quarry and render it into built artifact is very useful to remind those in the room who don't practise this that there is something else behind it," Professor Burry said.

Professor Stephanie Trigg, CHE's research program leader and organiser of the Collaboratory said: "We are not thinking in abstract and analytical ways about emotions, but how we actually can give voice to the way that we feel about temporality, time, memory and the past; how stone can act as a conduit of emotion."

The Centre's next Collaboratory, entitled ‘ Manufacturing Emotions' will be held at the University of Sydney from 8-9 September 2011.

To see the abstracts go to: https://hearts-and-stones.arts.unimelb.edu.au/programme/abstracts.html

Media references

Stephanie Trigg ( [email protected] )  (+61)  405 782 133  /  (+61 3)  8344 5504
(Leader, Shaping the Modern programme)
Erika von Kaschke (National Communications Officer)  (+61 8)  6488 4731
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716