lect 3 - connecting with nature - ways of seeing, ways of knowing 2013

OEEDU5003 Connecting with Nature

Week threeWays of seeing, ways of knowing.

Contains complex ideas.

Seeing and understanding our relationship to nature is cultural,

historical and personal

“landscape is comprised of not only what lies before our eyes but what lies

within our heads.” (Meinig, 1979)

The values we see in nature therefore depend on our capacity to ‘see’.

Our culture and experience provides the underlying essence or

interpretative framework we use to make sense of what we see.

Old or young?

Nice flower?

clockwise = right brainanticlockwise = left brain

Left•uses logic,

•detail oriented,

•facts rule

•words and language,

•present and past,

•math and science,

•can comprehend,

•acknowledges

•order/pattern perception,

•knows object name,

•reality based,

•forms strategies,

•practical,

•safe

Right•uses feeling, •"big picture" oriented•imagination rules, •philosophy & religion, •can "get it" (i.e. meaning), •believes, •appreciates, •spatial perception, •knows object function, •fantasy based, •presents possibilities, •impetuous, •risk taking

Clockwise or Anti-Clockwise?

Our shared history influences our values and how we see nature today…

…a potted history of Australian culture & nature in 2 slides!!!

• European ancestry

• Middle ages, enlightenment = shift in HNR

• Descartes (1596-1650) ‘I think therefore I am’ – separation of mind and body, humans and nature. ‘Conquest of nature’

• An agricultural shift (enclosure) to urban living (industrial revolution).

• Industrialisation• Specialisation• Urban development• Mechanical time• Wages - ‘the economy’• The rise of science, the fall of

mystery• Separation of church, state and

science• Darwinism (Neanderthal,1856)• The birth of consumerism/

advertising & work to for ‘better lives’ (reduce hrs of work to reduce consumption growth)

So today we ‘see’ nature through eyes shaped by white anglo-saxon history, culture and

experience. Informed by science and moderated by urban living.

Outdoor activity gives us ‘Expert eyes’, but also

blind us?

Nicholas Chevalier Mt Arapiles 1863 ‘Sublime’

Romanticism and Luddites

In Britain, romanticism was a reaction to industrialisation

(increasing alienation from nature and the slow death of subsistence

community based enterprise).

Romanticism and Luddites

Romanticism = a turning back to aesthetics and love of nature. (art, poetry, literature, architecture.)

The sublime.

Poetry and art as a window in the world.

Ye mountains! thine, O nature! Thou has fed

My lofty speculations; and in thee,

For this uneasy heart of ours, I find

A never-failing principle of joy

And purest passion.

Wordsworth 1797 Lyrical Ballads

Waterhouse (1849-1917)Men as victims of nature.

Waterhouse (1849-1917)Women as nymphs or part of nature (mythology).

How people saw landscape?

Artist’s impressions often reflected worldviews - ways of seeing nature.

Constable was one of the first artists to try and paint

nature as he saw it.

"When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I

try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture".

Constable was one of the first artists to try and paint

nature as he saw it.

An attempt at innocent eyes? – but how nature is seen and what

is attended to, is culturally mediated.

European artists in Australia

– Glover - born England 1767 Paintings from 1840.

– Buvalot - born Switzland 1814 - arrived Melbourne 1865 (painting from 1866)

– Streeton - born Australia 1867 (paintings from 1890)

Glover - born England 1767Arrived in Aus. Age 64

Painting from 1840

Glover

Glover

Buvalot - born Switzland 1814 arrived Melbourne 1865

painting from 1866

Von Guerard 1860s Kosciusko expedition as

scientific artist

Withers 1912

Streeton - born Australia 1867 (paintings from 1890)

Streeton