Pete Murray is back making a few more vids of Scottish climbing and bouldering, this time with the mighty HD camera in tow. We'll be producing a spin-off series of 'How To' films that illustrate the techniques to solve Scotland's top 50 or so boulder problems, 'condensing the story of these classic lines into a simple, concise story which reflects the intensity and brevity of the movement itself' (Pete's words). The HD vid of 'Gorilla' at Dumbarton Rock can be viewed on his Vimeo site.
Shamanistic zoomorphs, lithic graffiti, hallucinogenic tableaux, territory markings, knife-sharpeners … rock art – l'art rupestre – is so far beyond our traditional 'linguistic' history, it does not have an interpretative alphabet or a single line of confirmed meaning. There are many interpretations of the 'gravures' (carvings) and 'abris ornés' (decorated caves) in the hidden bivouacs throughout the forest of Fontainebleau. The sandstone marks easily under the nib of a hard flint from the deeper calcareous geology and this soft stone canvas has allowed our European ancestors to carve the stylised and modernistic strokes we might note as remarkable in a Picasso painting. Most of the carvings involve complex hash-marks and grids, overlaying each other, occasionally with mandala-like boxes. Sometimes there have been carved astonishingly beautiful anthropomorphs, (stylised human-like figures), or zoomorphs, (deities or humans manifesting in animal form) or argu...