[Ansteorra] The Journey: A&S

[Christie Ward]

I tried to figure out who said what to whom, but I couldn't see clearly who
said what.  So I'm just going to address some points as they occur in this
thread in general.

>In a static A&S you may or may not get to talk with the judge who may or
>may not know as much as you do about what you are doing.

In much the same way, an über-Duke can walk out and get one-shotted by an
absolute newby fighter. Sometimes it's luck and who's there and what kind of
day everyone is having.

It is always a possibility that at a judged competition there may not be a
judge available who does know more about your topic than you do.  This is
why we need your documentation.  Any Laurel should be able to pick our
quality craftsmanship in a piece, even if it is not their field of
expertise.  Given solid, basic documentation, and an awareness of
craftsmanship, the judge can usually figure out more or less how to evaluate
an entry.

On the other hand, if I had a farthing for every A&S entry that I've judged
that had no documentation, or where the documentation didn't cover even
minimal basics, I'd own a *much* larger farm by now.  Documentation isn't
(despite artisan rumors to the contrary) some obscure torture the Laurels
put you through for our own twisted amusement... it's very frequently
completely critical to us being able to judge your work at all.

>Also you are competing, like in bardic, against everyone at the same time.
>It is a different type of competition.

Not exactly.  What we've been trying for is a "dog show" type of judging.
We're not basing your A&S score on that of anyone around you, or how
well/poorly others did.  We are *attempting*, within the limitation of each
judge's very human and subjective understanding, to consider your item
against a "Breed Standard" for whatever type of thing it is.

So, for example, if you enter a reproduction of a carved 9th century
Icelandic whalebone earspoon and I end up judging it, I'm going to consider
your reproduction against your documentation and what I know about horn/bone
carving and about personal toilet items in the early Middle Ages.  Then,
following the predefined areas on the judging sheet, I have to rank how well
you did in various categories.

This is harder than you'd think. If you have never judged using our forms,
come ask me or another Laurel at the next A&S competition to help us judge.
I think *every* artisan competing should do this at least a time or two,
just so you can understand where we are getting these numbers (and no, we're
not usually pulling them out of our colons!)

When considering on, say, a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being high, a 5 would mean
that you were absolutely perfect and needed no improvement whatsoever, and
there was no way I could think of to offer suggestions for possible
improvements.  On that scale, a 3 would mean that you were doing pretty
good, you got a lot of things right and there are some areas that you might
want to investigate further for future projects.  A score less than that
probably in real life means that your documentation was so bad that we
couldn't score you any higher, because you didn't give us enough info to be
able to do so.

>When A&S is judged, we are judged against a masters skill. It would be much
>like if I knew that every time I stepped onto the tourney field I would
>draw you at your peak performance...why bother stepping on the
>field other than for the sheer pleasure of getting my toosh wooped.

To which someone (possibly Pendaran) replied:
>>This is incorrect. People are asked for their level of expertise on the
>>judging form. If you rate yourself as an expert, you'll be judged as one.
>>If you rate yourself as a novice you'll be judged as one.

The first point in this pair is just not right at all, and the second kind
of misses the point altogether (though it's true insofar as it goes).

When we are juding an A&S competition, we are not judging you again a
Laurel's skill level.  We are not deducting points for poor performance.

Our job is to look at the object, and where possible make useful suggestions
on how you can make improvements, either in the object itself or in future
projects of a similar nature.  Simultaneously, we have to fill out that
little judging form.

Think of the scoring not as "points deducted" from the score, but rather
that we start with a zero and *add points onto the score* based on the
entry's merits when compared against your documentation and the judge's
knowledge of the art.

In theory, every judge should be writing commentary on your forms.  We
should be including comments about what was good about the piece, as well as
offering suggestions on ways to improve either the piece or future work in
the same field.

In reality, sometimes this doesn't happen.  Heck, I write more than most
people and sometimes we get so swamped dur to lots of entris and few judges
that I even don't do as good a job as a should.

What the Expert/Intermediate/Novice info on the form is supposed to do is to
help the judges in structuring the commentary they give back to the artisan.
  I'm going to spend more time and warm fuzzies on a new artisan than I am
to some crusty old reprobate who has been working in that field for years.
I'd be wasting the expert's time with trivial feedback -- or I could
overwhelm the new person with too much detail and too many recommendations.
A novice needs one or two basic, concrete suggestions for improvement, plus
encouragement.  An expert needs good, solid, factual feedback at as high a
level as it can be offered, often in very nitpicking areas of the field.

>On the field, your weapons vary, in A&S although I can do stainglass or
>calligraphy or weaving and so on, the battle is still faught with the
>printed word. Very infrequently do the judges interview the
>partisipants.

Actually, whenever possible judges usually try to talk to the artisans if we
can.  Sometimes time constraints or lack of enough personnel makes this less
possible.

But I disagree that it comes down always to the documentation -- excellent
work and craftsmanship is the weapon with which you do battle in this venue.
  The documentation is not even always read by the judges -- and yes, we
should always read documentation, but people are human and sometimes they
don't.

But, nonetheless, just as a chivalric fighter may prefer melees over
individual tourament fighting, or spear over sword-and-shield, if the
documentation makes your skin crawl you always have the option of entering
only A&S venues such as Laurels' Prize Tourney, where it's a body of work
display; or you can enter competitions which have the winners selected by
votes from the populace, etc.

>Also, unlike combat, no one says you can not swing that way because it can
>not be proven that people swong that way in period. I have been told more
>than once that tatting is not period. It was started by the
>egyptions 2000bc, but did not enter the household of the european rich
>until after 1600ad, so "it is obviously not period." and there is no
>research done to say what it was being used for in the 3600 years
>between those dates.

If you can document the art to any place and time prior to 1600, then that
info needs to be in the documentation for the judges.  If it is in the
documentation and the judges overlooked that, you need to track them down
and talk to the individual judge about that in detail.

No one will tell you that you can't tat things for use in the Society, nor
even that you cannot enter them in A&S competitions, so your fighting
analogy on this one is wrong.  If you don't explain why it's period in your
documentation, though, you can't really complain if the judges base their
scores on what *they personally know about the art*.

::GUNNORA::

(One of those Southern Ansteorran Laurels)

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