Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 12.3
The present day landscape of Chat Moss, Lancashire
definition, collection and visualization. The theoretical underpinnings to Derek Hampson's
practice developed dramatically during an intense period of research, and the artwork itself
took on the unexpected form of a ceiling painting. The main question we identified was the
relationship between seeing and experience, where seeing is thought beyond mere optical
sensing and includes the notion of a more cognitive, 'conceptual' vision. This is a broad and
significant issue that has faced researchers in GIScience for many years, and not one that
this project can realistically hope to offer a final answer to; but we are able to propose certain
interdisciplinary understandings, underpinned by readings in phenomenology which may
contribute to the GIScience research agenda more specifically.
Underlying the project was the desire to test the concept of embodiment, in particular the
idea that our existence as embodied beings plays a crucial role in the way visual represen-
tations are made and understood, based on Michael Fried's writings on nineteenth century
German artist Adolph Menzel (Fried, 2002). Embodiment here can be characterized as pri-
oritizing of the body, as opposed to the mind, as the thing through which we understand
the world. The theory is that artists translate their naturally embodied everyday experience
into the way artworks are created. Viewers as embodied beings 'read' the representations
as intuitively as they are created. Coming to an understanding of the phenomenological
concept of embodiment was a central concern, initially through the writings of the French
philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty which had influenced Fried. The search for a deeper
understanding of these concepts led Hampson to the origins of phenomenology in the work
of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
During the development of the artwork, the potential of phenomenology became increas-
ingly significant to Hampson. Phenomenology, as instigated by Edmund Husserl (1859-
1938) and developed by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), creates a method through which a
profound analysis of data is possible. Putting to one side the 'natural attitude' of our everyday
understanding of the world, and engaging in a presupposition-less analysis of what is given
in our encounter with things in the world, leads to understandings that uncover profound
connections between the viewer and the viewed. In many ways phenomenology should be
thought of as a method of investigation rather than a belief system. This 'phenomenolog-
ical method' offered us a methodology that allowed us a way of reaching a complexity of
understanding about the historical and contemporary nature of the site culminating in the
ceiling painting.
The major methodological problem that we faced was how to analyse the process through
which the separate elements of data that contributed to the composition of the artwork
were combined in the process of art-making. Artists are famously reluctant to analyse the
procedure through which their works are made. The common concept of artistic creativity
is that it is instinctive, and that any process of clarification will lead to its disappearance.
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