Seeing with light and landscape: a walk around Stanton Moor (original) (raw)
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If we look at the landscape not as an object, far away and different from us, to dominate from the top of our superiority, but as a subject, as a person, in an absolutely topological perspective, then we must try to track down an interior light into landscapes, almost like a sap, which becomes an almost invisible but substantial support of the landscape itself .
Landscape as Experience: An Integration of Senses and Soul
eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics
The extent to which experiential and spiritual perceptions of the senses - in response to an event or place - can be transformed into visual art as a vehicle of communication, is yet to be understood. This paper, therefore, examines if a cohesive physical representation from a structured, visual art system is capable of developing a Christian experiential visual language that communicates a sensorial and transcendental experience of place; in this case North Queensland. Commentary on the physical representation subsequently tests if a holistic integration of one human’s sensorial response to place and an internal experience of Christian spirituality in that place can be communicated to the viewer through an art exhibition. The analysis found evidence to suggest that a spiritual essence of place - seeing place from inside and out - could be communicated and experienced by viewers of the exhibition.
2017
An Anthropology of Landscape tells the fascinating story of a heathland landscape in south-west England and the way different individuals and groups engage with it. Based on a long-term anthropological study, the book emphasises four individual themes: embodied identities, the landscape as a sensuous material form that is acted upon and in turn acts on people, the landscape as contested, and its relation to emotion. The landscape is discussed in relation to these themes as both ‘taskscape’ and ‘leisurescape’, and from the perspective of different user groups. First, those who manage the landscape and use it for work: conservationists, environmentalists, archaeologists, the Royal Marines, and quarrying interests. Second, those who use it in their leisure time: cyclists and horse riders, model aircraft flyers, walkers, people who fish there, and artists who are inspired by it. The book makes an innovative contribution to landscape studies and will appeal to all those interested in nat...
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.
Towards a New Landscape Aesthetic
Paper presented at the Spectral Landscapes: Explorations of the English Eerie event, Oxford, 2015. The full web article can be found on the Landscapism blog at: http://landscapism.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/towards-new-landscape-aesthetic.html
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,
Night walking: darkness and sensory perception in a night-time landscape installation
Cultural Geographies - CULT GEOGR, 2011
Human sensory orders are recalibrated when faced with the reduced illumination levels of the night; it is harder to judge depth and distance, details are obscured, colours muted, and one is obliged to compensate for this loss of visual acuity by drawing on the other senses. Darkness also forces one to question how one’s body is in relation to that which surrounds, challenging one’s human sense of bodily presence and boundary. Focusing on The Storr: Unfolding Landscape, a temporary night-time installation by the environmental arts charity NVA (Nacionale Vite Activa) on the Isle of Skye in 2005, this paper draws together contemporary art theory on installation art and recent post-phenomenological work in geography to explore the ways in which individuals experience the nocturnal landscape. In so doing, the paper highlights the close connections between these two bodies of work and how they might be usefully employed to advance traditional geographical understandings of landscape in art. At the same time, however, it raises both an empirical concern and a methodological question. First, regarding the uncritical way in which visibility is incorporated into many post-phenomenological accounts of landscape. Second, regarding the validity of focussing on isolated narratives in instances such as this when so much of what the individuals experienced was caused by, or shared with, others.