ABSTRACT
A generalized observation that arts emerge as aesthetic production grounded in culture and community might serve as a point of entry for exploring the intersection of place and practice found in both cultural mapping and in folklore studies. Folklore, as a discipline, has long focused on place and its dynamic relationship to cultural practices, identities, and groups. The discipline of folklore, in a very general way, is concerned with the practice of culture—the poetic and creative activities through which people generate meaning and identity in both quotidian and special settings. Driving tours crafted by public folklorists took shape via audio cassettes in the 1980s, offering narration linked to printed maps that indicated the locations of traditional cultural forms and the places where traditional artists worked. Mapping culture via audio tours pushed folklorists to become engaged with technologies of distribution at the end of the 1990s, establishing an important step toward the digitally enabled projects.
