The greatest poverty is not to live in the physical world. - Wallace Stevens in Esthetique du mal
In contrast to the slickly literal heavy-metal worlds of virtual entertainment, I would describe most of the artistic virtual worlds that I have seen so far as constructivist. Sometimes technological artifact and sometimes conscious choice, the imagery in such worlds is blatantly constructed. Dizzying topologies, illegible structures, surfaces with their polygons showing - sometimes even the algorithms are showing, of which a certain flavor of techno-artist is very proud. The invisible human being, sometimes iconized as a tiny floating cluster of polygons that one is told represents a hand, is reconstructed as an absence - a disembodied point of view that moves without friction, noise, rhythm, breath. In a medium that tries so hard to surround us and saturate our senses, this denial of the embodied self seems an absurd contradiction. -Brenda Laurel, Panel, "Computer Graphics - Are We Forcing People to Evolve?," SIGGRAPH '94, Orlando |
She understood that the colors and textures of the world we live in are body to our sense of self. -Bram Djikstra of Georgia O'Keefe
Placed bodies: suggested reading
Extensive place list on the Goddard environmental studies resource page.
Abram, David (1996). Merleau-Ponty and the voice of the Earth. In: David Macauley (ed.) Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology, 82-101. New York/London.
- Readable introduction to Merleau-Ponty on embodiment and environment. (EE)
Rich, Adrienne. (1986). Notes toward a politics of location. In Blood, bread and poetry: Selected prose, 1979-1985. New York: W. W. Norton.
Scharff Virginia ed. 2003 Seeing Nature Through Gender Lawrence: University Press of Kansas
- A collection of essays in environmental history seen through the perspective of gender. Four essays are gathered in a section titled "Bodies." (RL)
Shepard Paul 1982/1999 "Nature and madness" in Ecopsychology, T Roszak, M Gomes, A Kanner eds, 21-40 Sierra Club Books. Also online.
- Lucid discussion of reasons for and environmental results of desire for disembodiment. (EE)
Spretnak Charlene, The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World. Reading, MA, Perseus, 1997.
- A brilliant and timely critique of modernity, including a fine analysis of deconstructive postmodernism. She traces much of the suffering in the developed world to our having demoted "a rich, full sense of body, nature and place" to "the dumb matter on top of which modern culture is constructed." So interdisciplinary it could be placed just about anywhere: ecology, spirituality, economics, philosophy. (LW)
Architectural refs:
Alexander Christopher 2003 New concepts in complexity theory arising from studies in the field of architecture
Alexander Christopher The nature of order (4 volumes)
Alexander Christopher 1977 A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction
Stewart-Pollack, Julie "Why nature should serve as a model for built environments" http://www.isdesignet.com/Magazine/Oct'96/NeedNature.htm
Benedikt, Michael "Stanley Saitowitz' Transvaal House" http://www.ar.utexas.edu/center/benedikt_articles/saitowitz.htr
Benedikt, Michael "On Adding to the Salk" http://www.ar.utexas.edu/center/benedikt_articles/salk.htr
Benedikt, Michael "The work of Rob Quigley" http://www.ar.utexas.edu/center/benedikt_articles/quigley.htr
Alexander is the classical exponent of embodiment in archtecture. Stewart-Pollack is a basic discussion. The Benedikt papers are gorgeous, lucid, environmentally passionate things.
Anthropology refs:
Brody Hugh 2001 The other side of Eden
Rose D 1996 Nourishing terrains: Australian aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness Australian Heritage Commission
Rose D 2000 Dingo makes us human: life and land in an Australian Aboriginal culture Cambridge
Shipek Florence Connally 1991 Delfina Cuero: her autobiography: an account of her last years and her ethnobotanical contributions Ballena Press Anthropological Papers #38
On perceptual contact with environment:
Sewall Laura 1999 Sight and sensibility: the ecopsychology of perception Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam
Langer Monika 1989 Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of perception Macmillan
Epp Ellie 2001 Leaving the land: perception and fantasy, in Land, relationship and community, a symposium, S Semchuck ed, 10-18 Presentation House Gallery
Keller Evelyn 1983 A feeling for the organism Yale
Gibson J 1979 The ecological approach to visual perception Houghton Mifflin
Masumoto David 2002 Four seasons in five senses
Place pedagogy:
Olsen Andrea 2002 Body and earth: an experiential guide University Press of New England.
I read three chapters of this book entranced. Olsen's approach to teaching environmental studies to her students at Middlebury College have them write a lot, explore outside a lot, move with their bodies, tune into their bodies - so resonated with me that I knew her writing, movement, and visual art exercises would help me keep my own dialogue with nature open throughout the semester. (AB)
O'Sullivan Edmund Transformative Learning: educational vision for the 21st century.
O'Sullivan is the Director of the Transformative Learning Centre at the University of Toronto. Inspired by Thomas Berry, he talks in terms of Earth Literacy being required at the terminal phase of the Cenozoic Era and the beginning the Ecozoic Era.
Strobel Craig Creating an Environmentally-Integrated Culture Class Syllabus http://conspiritu.org/craig/envintculsyl.htm
Other non-fiction:
Berry Wendell. Standing on the Earth: Selected Essays. UK: Bolgoonooxa Press 1991
Butala Sharon 1997 The perfection of the morning Ruminator Books
Childs Craig 2002 Soul of nowhere: traversing grace in a rugged land Sasquatch Books
Djikstra Bram 1998 Georgia O'Keefe and the eros of place Princeton
Griffin Susan 1978 Woman and nature Harper and Row
Kroeber Karl 1994 Ecological literary criticism: romantic imagining and the biology of mind Columbia
Laurel Brenda "Global Media and Common Ground" address delivered at Art Futura 1991
Lopez Barry 1986 Arctic dreams: imagination and desire in a northern landscape
Pollan Michael 1991 Second nature: a gardener's education, The Atlantic Monthly Press
Spragg Mark 2000 Where rivers change direction Riverhead Books
Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. New York: North Point Press, 1990.
Snyder Gary Earth House Hold
Non-fiction anthologies:
Barnhill D ed 1999 At home on the earth University of California Press
Includes a stunning essay about deer-hunting by Richard Nelson
Finch R, J Elder eds 2002/1990 Nature writing: the tradition in English Norton
Particularly good in this collection is "The island of auks" by Franklin Russell
Roszak T, M Gomes, A Kanner eds 1999 Ecopsychology, Sierra Club Books
Includes a short essay version of Shepard's Nature and madness
Fiction and poetry:
Berry Wendell various
Colette 2002 My mother's house and Sido Farrer, Strauss and Giraux
Dinesen I 1992 Out of Africa Modern Library Series
Gordimer Nadine 1983 The Conservationist Viking
Gunn Neal 1951 The well at the world's end Souvenir Press
Le Guin U 1985 Always coming home University of California
Le Guin took a piece of land she knew in childhood and imagined a right use for it 20,000 years in the future
Lopez Barry 1995 Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren Avon
Lopez Barry 1981 Winter Count, Avon
Marlatt Daphne 1972 Vancouver Poems, Coach House Press
Marlatt Daphne 1974 Steveston, Talonbooks
Wordsworth William 1785 The Prelude
Other media
Lopez Barry The Rediscovery of North America (video)
Reidesheimer Thomas dir. Rivers and Tides
A documentary about the landscape art of Andy Goldsworthy.
- thanks to student Anne Bergeron for many of these recommendations