Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
There is some justification in this as any self-conscious analysis by the artist of their creative
process in the moment of its employment will inevitably become part of that practice, which
would amount to an unwarranted intrusion into the creative process. Therefore we had to
find an approach that would allow the process through which the Chat Moss artwork was
to be made to be analysed in terms of its engagement with data without intruding into the
creative process.
This was achieved through an approach that built upon phenomenology's own methods
of investigation. Phenomenology can in some ways be seen as the antithesis of psychology. If
for psychology meaning resides internally in states of mind, for phenomenology meaning is
derived through an engagement with objects, things in the world outside us. To understand
the world in this way a particular methodology was needed that allowed questions to be
asked about the nature of our relationship to objects without the asking affecting the answer.
Phenomenology developed a number of approaches that enabled this, leading to a series of
discoveries that were instrumental in allowing us to scrutinize more effectively how different
types of data contributed towards the artwork's creation.
A particular implication for GIScience in this area is the way in which methodologies
for describing and communicating the nature of the real world as experienced by differ-
ent people can be developed. Phenomenology offers a different way of thinking from the
largely computer science-based ontological approach to knowledge representation which
has received most attention in recent years. Knowledge representation schemes in GIScience
are dominated by visible 'mappable' objects and their properties, and rarely accommodate
more ill-defined experiences.
If we are aiming at a more complete representation of a place, then these ill-defined
experiences and their contribution to our understanding need to be clarified. We are talking
here about the relationship between us and things, whether an artwork, a photograph, a
landscape or a fleeting thought - and the way in which the relationship, through a data
exchange between us and it, allows an intuition about the site to be constructed. Intuition
is central to the phenomenological account of our structures of perception. Heidegger
defines intuition as 'simple apprehension of what is itself bodily found just as it shows itself '
(Heidegger, 1985). Intuition is a deep understanding, derived from an encounter with things,
allowing us to see something as it actually is in itself, without any unwarranted conceptual
constructions being placed on it.
12.5.1 Phenomenological analysis
In order to get to an understanding of what phenomenology teaches us about the structures
of perception, we will now offer an analysis of four of the experiences, encounters with
things, which led to the creation of the Chat Moss artwork. These experiences involved an
engagement with three forms of data: spoken, visual and direct 'bodily' encounters. On the
surface there is a disparity between these, yet if we examine them in detail it becomes clear
that they are linked in unexpected ways.
The first experience, which began Hampson's fascination with the place, was that of a
spoken account of the story of Chat Moss. This occurred in childhood when, in a bright
Victorian classroom, he was told the story of Chat Moss. Told with no visual aids, the teller
described the conquering of the Moss by George Stephenson, his struggles to survey the
route in the face of recalcitrant landowners and suspicious locals, the subsequent labours
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