Landscape semiotics (original) (raw)

Semiotic study of landscapes: An overview from semiology to ecosemiotics

Sign Systems Studies, 2011

The article provides an overview of different approaches to the semiotic study of landscapes both in the field of semiotics proper and in landscape studies in general. The article describes different approaches to the semiotic processes in landscapes from the semiological tradition where landscape has been seen as analogous to a text with its language, to more naturalized and phenomenological approaches, as well as ecosemiotic view of landscapes that goes beyond anthropocentric definitions. Special attention is paid to the potential of cultural semiotics of Tartu–Moscow school for the analysis of landscapes and the possibilities held by a dynamic, dialogic and holistic landscape definition for the development of ecosemiotics.

Recognizing the Dialogical Nature of the Landscape: For a Marxist Semiotics

Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso

This article aims to defend the dialogical nature of the landscape. Working in between the borders of the Bakhtinian philosophy of language and cultural studies on landscape, we defend that landscape study should not be studied without considering the cultural forms of communication in the different domains of social organization– the speech genres; that landscape is a semiotic encounter with a concrete otherness; that the interpreter who emerges when an area enters a relationship of representation is necessarily characterized as a chronotope; that every landscape is a chronotopic representation; that cultural geography recognizes that the semiotic aspects of the landscape are as material as its morphology. We start from the hypothesis that landscape is a chronotopic representation that is always made possible by means of some speech genre, because it is always a communicative process, and an encounter with another in a situation of socially organized interrelation – it is concrete ...

The cultural landscape sign from the horizons of semiotic anthropology

The work seeks to build theoretical and logical links based on the triadic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) within the categories of cultural landscape and territory. The article tries to demonstrate how cultural landscapes and territory, as contrastable expres- sions in the empirical reality, constitute mental models that express complex rich and com- plicated social nuances and meanings in terms of scienti c readings for anthropology. The work expresses how the spheres of semiotics signi cance allow for a logical, metalogical and dialogical adjustment of the models of environmental interpretation, that exist in the eld of environmental thought and in its readings of territory and culture.

SEMIOTIC READING IN LANDSCAPE COMPONENTS

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A Study of the Semiotic Understanding of Land Art

Semiotics is the science of signs. It is known as an approach to expose the fundamental structural elements of the meaning of an object or a term. It comprises of the study of signs, designation, indication, analogy, likeness, symbolism, signification, metaphor, and communication. Semiotic and land art are closely associated with each other. Land art consists of sculptures, carvings, and performances located at specific natural surroundings to deliver messages of love and concern for the environment, even though they are ephemeral or located in inaccessible places they are transmitted by the semioticians. Like all works of art, each piece could be classified as abstract or realistic and would be created using signs and symbols of the artist’s semiotic system to code the messages and feelings. The aim of this article is to examine the semiotics of land art based on signs and symbols of landscape through documentary analysis. The findings of the study revealed that semiotics is a powerful tool to reflect feelings and sentiments regarding different landscape. Some implications were also furnished.

Introducing semiotic landscapes

CITATION DETAILS: Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2010). Introducing semiotic landscapes. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (eds), Semiotic Landscapes: Image, Text, Space (pp. 1-40). London: Continuum.

Semiotics as a Framework for Reading and Writing Landscape

2021

Problem statement: Modern semiotics has opened new avenues for research in various fields of science, and it has expanded the process of analysis in different branches by providing models. It seems that semiotics can provide a framework for landscape architects. Research objective: This research seeks to discover the relationship between semiotics and landscape architecture to develop a framework for the analysis and design of landscape architecture based on semiotics. Research method: This article employs the comparative method to analogize a landscape to a text and semiotics to a text analysis tool. Using a descriptive-analytical method, it examines and analyzes the basic concepts, opinions, and divisions of experts in the field of semiotics and proposes combined models for analysis and design. Conclusion: Preparing a mixed three-dimensional model, which studies thephysical, semantic and audience-based dimensions of the landscape in relation to each other for landscape studies, ba...

Philosophy of Landscape : Think, Walk, Act

2019

This landmark collection of essays on landscape offers a much-needed comprehensive exploration of an important dimension of our human environment. Landscape is different from such environmental topics as the forest, the city, and the sea. Unlike other subjects of environmental inquiry, landscape is strangely situated, giving it a compelling significance. For landscape is not a place that can be clearly demarcated. It is not a natural object like a mountain or a river, nor is it a location such as a valley or an island. In fact, landscape is no thing at all. Etymologically speaking, landscape is an expanse of the perceived environment: a scene, a region, surroundings as viewed by an observer. This gives landscape unique standing in environmental experience because landscape cannot be considered alone: it is, in effect, defined by and in relation to human perception. Landscape is a relationship. We can think here of the Claude glass, so called because it was an optical device, invented by the seventeenth century French landscape painter Claude Lorrain, through which an artist or a traveler in the countryside could look and adjust in order to frame a pleasing aspect of the scenery, arranging the view through the glass to resemble what a painter would depict with brush and paint. This exemplifies how what is designated as a landscape depends on the viewer, a point of exceeding importance. For there is no landscape "out there", so to speak, no independent object or place. Recognizing this has dramatic implications, for it demonstrates how landscape is actually a complex synthesis of viewer and environment. Recognizing this led me to entitle my first extended discussion of environment, "The Viewer in the Landscape", and that same understanding underlies many of the essays in this volume. Moreover, landscape has been used metaphorically in ways that do not always suit a visual meaning, such as 'earthscape' and 'spacescape' and even in referring to memories of one's previous home as an internal landscape.-Filosofia da Paisagem. Estudos, 2013. A compilation of essays by Adriana Veríssimo Serrão, the principal investigator of the project. Organized in four chapters: "Anthropology and Philosophy of Nature"; "Nature and Art: The Composite Categories"; "Landscape and Environment. A theoretical debate" and "Problems of Philosophy of the Landscape", the book reflects on the essence of Landscape as idea and reality, being and manifestation. 'A piece of nature' is, as such, an internal contradiction; nature has no pieces, it is the unity of a whole. The instant anything is removed from this wholeness, it is no longer nature, precisely because it can only be 'nature' within that unlimited unity, as a wave of that global flow. 2 19 Spazio limitato il paesaggio, ma aperto, perché, a differenza degli spazi chiusi, ha sopra di sé il cielo, cioè lo spazio illimitato; e non rappresenta l'infinito (simbolicamente o ilusionisticamente), ma si apre all'infinito, pur nella finitezza del suo essere limitato: costituendosi come presenza,

EXPERIENCING LANDSCAPE. A PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

In this paper, I draw on a possible conception of landscape from Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. Starting from an overview of the two main positions regarding landscape within the continental philosophical tradition (Simmel and Ritter), I consider the use of the term 'landscape' in Merleau-Ponty's thought, without wishing to claim that the French philosopher presents a philosophy of landscape within his works. I want to show that important elements for the outline of a phenomenological conception of landscape emerge from Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. According to Simmel, landscape is seen as the product of a spiritual act, and in Ritter's perspective, landscape emerges from a detached contemplation of nature proper to humans in the modern era. Contrasted with these views, a consideration of Merleau-Ponty's original works allows to draw on a conception of landscape in which the experiential and perceptual dimensions are fundamental. This view enables us to consider landscape in its centrality for human experience, and leads to a better understanding of the strong ontological commitment between humans and nature.

The Landscape as a Semiotic Interface between Organisms and Resources

Biosemiotics, 2008

Despite an impressive number of investigations and indirect evidence, the mechanisms that link patterns and processes across the landscape remain a debated point. A new definition of landscape as a semiotic interface between resources and organisms opens up a new perspective to a better understanding of such mechanisms. If the landscape is considered a source of signals converted by animal cognition into signs, it follows that spatial configurations, extension, shape and contagion are not only landscape patterns but categories of identifiable signals. The eco-field hypothesis, by which cognitive templates are used to identify spatial configurations as carriers of meaning according to an active function, are combined with the sign theory to create an eco-semiotic model of landscape representation. Signs from landscape change in efficacy according to mechanisms of degradation, and metric sign categories have to be considered. An interdisciplinary coalescence is expected by using the theoretical approach in different fields of conservation and resource management and planning.