"What isn't landscape?"
Laryssa posed this interesting question in the placemaking class last week, and I would like this interesting dialogue to continue. Pitch in and comment!
I thought about this over the weekend, and here's my take on this question:
Landscape, by definition, is used to describe the visible area of land, usually the countryside. It is also used figuratively to describe the invisible features of a situation or activity. Landscape is both the physical place that we see, and the virtual place that we imagine. Hence, it is:
The real + the imagined = Something that exist in our mind.
The material + immaterial = Something that we can perceive.
Then what isn't landscape is something that is beyond what we can see or think about.
For example, the eleventh dimension of the string theory.
5 comments:
I think the string theory approach to distilling a definition of landscape is still too broad...to the extent that the long term effects of such a definition leads to a disintegration of our profession ( I am in one way speaking to the increasing loss of design work to architects who are scooping up the remnant pieces of our purview that the ambiguity of terminology leaves behind).
Using the systems approach we learn here in studio, maybe we need to be more judicious in setting language rules. For example, when referring to a cake we do not look at the broken eggshell on the counter and say “cake.”…though in a systems approach to understanding the world, the egg would be partial/potential cake…as would the water, flour, sugar, heat from the oven, wood from the spoon, water that fed the tree that made the spoon…the list becomes immediately infinite, which in turn breaks down the communicative power of the English word “cake.”
So, how to tighten our terminology rules? Perhaps we could think of two approaches.
1. If landscape is literally EVERYTHING including the existential, then we (as landscape architects) would be charged with responsible design of everything. We are not charged with this and we do not design everything… (phew! I would never pass that licensing exam…) With this in mind, maybe we need to take a much more traditional approach and put ourselves in a box labeled “the visible area of land.” Then we need to stop referring to imagination, bodies, the intangible and the existential as landscapes.
2. Another way of thinking about what isn’t landscape is to differentiate between human actions from the tools with which we act and the product of action. For example the following maps out wheat fields as landscape:
Farmer (landscape)
Soil, wheat, water,sunlight (landscape)
Ideas about how to use the earth (landscape)
Tiller (landscape)
The farmer tills the earth (not landscape)
This makes a lot of sense as we cannot possible design with or for the human will. Perhaps not a concrete answer, but it gets us one step closer to a definition of landscape that is not all encompassing.
Maybe in the end, it boils down to the discrepancy between the scope of the word 'landscape' as we use it in english, and the scope of the word 'landscape' as we use it in the term 'landscape architects' as a practical profession.
This may account for the difficulty of translating the precise meaning of the word 'landscape' into Chinese, Arabic and Indonesian.
Note on your point in no. 2,
So essentially,
noun that can be put on land = landscape, and
verb = not landscape?
And I agree with you that restrictive definition is better, since it gives shape and clarity to the idea itself, and helps has as landscape architects to move from the abstract and the realms of practicality of physical/programmatic design.
Take the verbs out of landscape? What about erode, deposit, flow, settle, erupt, drift, grow, burn, ......etc, etc???
The use of string theory is a little to broad. I would propose an older problem in theoretical physics to approach this question and comments within the blog. The Schrodinger's cat thought experiment is an appropriate means to test some of the comments. There are two key points that are applicable. They are:
1- The potential for objects to be in two (or multiple) states/conditions always exists. This describes the constant shift and change within environments. Needless to say, this is more accurately described as ecology.
2- In order order for these potential changes to be identified, they must be recorded. This takes the shape of multiple forms of representation like film, painting, narrative or memory. It is also allows us to reference dutch paintings as a part of the origin of the term landscape.
Therefore, when considered in the context of the experiment, it would suggest that the term landscape not be substituted for ecology, as is often the case. It is the process of identifying a particular point of transition evident within an ecology- and how it is represented that is landscape.
Therefore, every ecology can become a landscape. The question is how you choose to describe it.
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