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Environmental Aesthetics
Nature and the natural world have historically been the subject and object of aesthetics. The natural has been conceptualized and theorized as the beautiful, pastoral, sublime, and picturesque. These aesthetic categories have historically functioned to frame and construct the natural world for us against a human, technologically determined environment. Environmental Aesthetics poses questions and forms an analysis of our aesthetic relationship and judgments of the natural world as a methodology for coming to a better relationship that will promote environmental respect; not just preservation. Additionally, this field attempts to situate humans within the natural world in contrast to situating them above and against it. Environmental Aesthetics asks: Is our relationship to nature always already an aesthetic mode of perception and articulation? |
he discipline of Environmental
Aesthetics proposes a philosophical and phenomenological analysis of human relationships to
environments be they man-made or natural. Theorists have used this analytical structure
to examine
specifically human relationships to the natural environment and to create a catalyst for
environmental preservation and engagement. Through the process of cognizant, aesthetic interaction
with the natural world individuals, societies,
and cultures can develop an environmental awareness
away from an anthropocentrically centered system—such as stewardship or ownership—toward
a participatory ethical relationship to the natural world.
The Projects
In the pursuit of this question and as an investigation into Environmental Aesthetics, the UCSC Digital Art | New Media Graduate Project Group, Unnatural Selection , has created this web site as a format to disseminate its research into:
Aesthetics and suburban development (Manifest Landscape)
The aesthetics of genetic manipulation (The Genetics of Desire and The Transgenic Sublime)
The issues of aesthetics alternative energy (The Art of Alternative Energy)
The creation of an experimental installation dealing with the relationship between Early American Pastoral Aesthetics and contemporary Environmental Aesthetics (The Hudson River Bonsai Project)
Primary Sources
A few key published works have been influential on the shaping of our projects:
The Botany of Desire:
A Plant’s-Eye View of the World
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The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America
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Influential Artists
Certain 19th century painters of the American Landscape have played an influential role with Unnatural Selection's research, especially Albert Beirstadt (1830-1902). Beirstadt was a key member of the Hudson River School of landscape painters. He painted in the typically monumental style which celebrated America’s notion of Manifest Destiny and the country’s relationship to new western expansion. He had a flair for painting trees with particularly grotesque stylization which lends itself to use in the Hudson River Bonsai project. He was also prolific. There is a listing with images of 560 paintings by Beirstadt here.