A&S Competitions Was Re: Tournaments

[James Crouchet]

Not a bad idea, Estrill.  In fact, I too have a twitch about A&S 
compititions. By setting asside an area to display our "most period 
works" we are implicidly pointing out that we are, in fact, moderns doing 
the SCA thing. If such art was displayed in period it would not have 
included plain carts, looms and crossbow shafts, all of which I have 
displayed in our A&S as examples of my woodworking.

Perhaps a better idea is for the judges to wander from camp to camp and 
give a scroll for _best camp_. (I would prefer to avoid the term _most 
period camp_ as another admission of our moderness). This would also 
encourage folks to turn their efforts to one of the two most important 
A&S applications in the SCA, period encampments (the other is costuming). 
After all, our events are meant to re-create as well as rec-reate and for 
that encampments with a period look are essential.

While we are talking about judging let me point out that we are all 
judges. While official recognition is nice, any one of us can give word 
fame and/or largess for something good that we see.  Next time you go to 
an event take a prize or two and give them to the person you see with the 
best A&S. Or give them word fame. 

Here is a challenge for the bards: next bardic circle you are in describe
some wonderfull A&S you have seen and tell who made it. A _good_ bard 
could really make his audience appriciate the item. Perhaps work it into 
a story, song or poem.
 

Savian


On Thu, 23 Mar 1995, Deborah Sweet wrote:

> Alessandre writes:
> 
> >and I would get rid of Arts and Science Competitions, Displays never, 
> >Comps make my skin crawl.  What do you think?  Any suggestions out 
> >there?
> 
> Other than making your skin crawl, are there other reasons you would 
> get rid of A&S?
> 
> I admit that most competitions or displays on the whole don't seem to 
> be well attended with items (or people looking at them) (at least in 
> this region) :-), considering just *how*much* A&S stuff is really out 
> there. I think a lot of people are intimidated by the dreaded 
> "documentation" requirement (myself included).
> 
> Maybe it would be better to have more of a roving contest, whereby the 
> judges, as they wander around all day doing their other things, take 
> notice of items in certain categories that really impress them. Several 
> different methods could be used for either tallying votes/opinions or 
> handing out "certs of good stuff" on the spot. I would favor something 
> like this option because it (potentially) recognizes stuff that is 
> actually being used. 
> 
> Or in other words not something created specifically *and*only* for an 
> A&S Competition.:-)  (Which I realize is not really the case, but it's 
> still my first, gut level reaction whenever I see that someone has 
> *exactly* copied something from this picture in this book. I always 
> want to ask them after the competition "Well *now* what are you going 
> to do with it?" :-) 
> 
> 
> Estrill Swet
> Dancemonger
> Mooneschadoweshire
> stillwater, OK
> dssweet at okway.okstate.edu
>