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Hi. Thank you for joining us for today's tour of "Helluva Hole: Commercializing Resistances in the Cavernous World of Speleology." This tour site was originally developed for a Visual Communication class at Southwestern University taught by Dr. Robert Bednar. Helluva Hole was designed strictly for educational purposes, and any resemblance to other cave sites, whether real or virtual, is unintentional and should be considered a compliment to the resources provided by America's show caves, caving societies, cartographers, authors and website developers.
The idea for the development of this site grew out of a study of methodologies for discursive analysis of visual communication within institutions as traditionally and predominately applied to art galleries and museums. Having toured a number of show caves, including recent participation in a "wild tour" with my son, it occurred to me that a vast range of visual communication questions arise in the caving environment in particular. Show caves are an unusually dramatic combination of traditional gallery and museum settings, but have seemingly arisen with a largely limited consideration of their function as part of such institutionalized ways of presenting the visual, and with arguably no intentional regard for published communication theory. Hooper-Greenhill says that "the map has been used as a metaphor for the museum" and that "the functions of maps are to select from the totality of the world those aspects that can serve to depict it through ordering, classifying and constructing pictures of 'reality'" (2000, 17). The online "tour" format seemed an ideal way to explore Greenhill's reference to the museum/gallery as analogous to a map, especially as cartography is such an integral part of cave historification. My development of this work draws heavily on pioneers of leisure and tourism studies such as Mitchell and Urry, but attempts to blend such studies with a more multi-disciplinary approach that also applies psychoanalytic, semiological and anthropological aspects of communicative analysis to a realm of tourism that has received little attention from these methodologies. Helluva Hole was intentionally designed with some decidedly "kitschy" elements to tease out Mitchell's dichotomy of the tourist versus traveler.
While this body of work is by no means a discrete or complete analysis, it is a foray into expressing how traditional show caves present themselves for consumption by a specific subject. It is intended to highlight a juncture between visuality, commerce and tourism in a specific, often overlooked locale. It also aims to show that diversified tours have arisen as a means to capitalize--through a negotiable framework--on the resistances expressed by experientially based subjects as opposed to the more aesthetic subjectivity motivated by traditional cave tours.
Due to constraints of time and research planning, this tour admittedly lacks a tangible audience studies component and a detailed, disciplined approach to the vast materials contributed by the natural sciences and the art of photography in particular. However, as both a student and a mother who is always searching for new ways to help my children view and appreciate the world in which we live and consume, it is my hope that this tour allows you to begin to see the landscape of the cave in particular in new ways that account for the agency of their composition upon your view.
For further questions upon completion of this tour, please feel free to contact me at: shearerd@southwestern.edu