This book reads the emergence of a unique art and culture in the Philippines during the colonial era from the optic of communications theory and the emerging theoretical discourse from information design. It views colonial exchange not primarily as an exchange of cultural goods, tangible or intangible, but as a negotiation forged by the communication between sender and receiver. In such a process, the cultural good is ineluctably transformed as it leaves the context of the sender and is transferred to the context of the receiver, who may be antipodes of each other—physically, psychologically, and culturally—as was the case of Filipinos and Europeans. Exchanges in the areas of space, the biota, the visual, literary, performative, culinary, and sartorial arts are traced. How messages are transmitted, decoded, and transformed to create the new reality of colonial art and culture are documented.
Author and Publisher: Rene B. Javellana, S.J., Ateneo de Manila University Press (2017)
