Post on 20-Dec-2014
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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