Robert P. Taylor's SeeRIBIE: Personal Reflections on a Professional Trip

Humans have long left visual impressions of their defining interactions, sometimes in lieu of anything written, sometimes to compliment their textual records. Whatever their intention, the most interesting reflect their interactions with each other, using the images of these interactions to suggest what they view as central definitions of the meaning of life. Museums are filled with examples, from past cultures all over the world. And while portraits and sculptures of their leaders survive, from Epypt, Assyria, Rome, China, the Asian Steppes, and elsewhere, it is the more detailed, many-person images of their societies in action that often tell us far more of how they saw themselves and that convey most clearly what their lives were like. One need only consider the alternatives of agricultural, military, and other social activities pictured in the foyers or entry corridors of the great Egyptian pyramid complexes from the era of the Fourth to Sixth Dynasty to appreciate this.

By focusing on a specific event, RIBIE 2000, and the travel and related activities surrounding one participant's role in them all, SeeRIBIE continues that legacy . It assumes that by featuring sketches done on-the-spot, and quickly, one can convey a sense of the defining process of life that would be incompletely or inadequately represented even when traditional records of our lives are kept, be they proceedings, programs, photographs, video, or other. The validity of this assumption can be examined further by visiting other parallel Taylor sites through Other Event-Generated Websites, below.