Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Ingold further argues that in perceiving a landscape we assemble a list of tasks that
must be completed; in that we see a garden which needs to be maintained, corn to
be harvested, and houses to be built. These perceived tasks, and active engage-
ment in the following, are “the constitutive acts of dwelling”. Ingold terms this en-
semble of tasks the “taskscape” (Ingold 2000, p. 194ff.), which is not a stable con-
dition, but underlies temporal alteration. Following Merleau-Ponty, the perception
of the environment is not restricted to visual fields, and requires the moving body
with all its senses. Vision, sound and colours, smells and touches all relate to per-
ception.
“It has been wrongly asserted that the edges of the visual field always furnish an objec-
tively stable point. Once again, the edge of the visual field is not a real line. Our visual
field is not neatly cut out of our objective world, and is not a fragment with sharp edges
like the landscape framed by the window. We see as far as our hold on things extends,
far beyond the zone of clear vision, and even behind us. When we reach the limits of the
visual field, we do not pass from vision to non-vision: the gramophone playing in the
next room, and not expressly seen by me, still counts in my visual field.” (Merleau-
Ponty 1989, p. 277)
Practitioners of environmental management may argue that an environment, in-
cluding its specific smells and sounds, could be simulated with some sort of future
technology, as for instance performed in the science fiction TV series Star Trek. In
three-dimensional simulations on board of a space ship members of the “next gen-
eration” are able to rebuild their favourite environments in a highly realistic man-
ner for leisure purposes.
Driven by the idea that people could make better informed decisions about
changes in their local environment, planners today aim at ever more realistic simu-
lation in order to facilitate “real experiences”. However, we can object that experi-
ences of simulated and existing environment cannot enable similar perceptions,
since a person would be aware of the artificiality. Further, it is hard to imagine
that people would be able to spend a longer period of time in the simulated envi-
ronment, experience seasonal changes, to permanently dwell in it, work with it,
and use it without being aware of it, in the sense of an “attentive involvement”
(Ingold 2000, p. 207). What is more, perception of a familiar environment might
not be feasible. The producers of simulations may direct their attention towards
very specific details in the target environment, whereas residents would probably
depict a different set of features. Landscape architects moving around a particular
site in order to get “good views” and take pictures for visual simulation perceive
the environment by spending time in it. However, their “taskscape” and therefore
their attention towards particular things differ from residential taskscapes and their
particular attentive involvement.
Büscher's ethnographic study on the work of landscape architects concludes by
referring to Ingold (2000) that landscape architects were provided with “views
from nowhere” through maps and plans, but that in their work preparing the visual
simulation of projects they gained a “view from somewhere” (Büscher 2006, p.
294). Practitioners therefore get to know the candidate location as other visitors to
the place would. Büscher describes landscape architects as being emphatic in em-
ploying some kind of imagined local perspective to the field. However, the mean-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search