Final Project: Nature and Technology

I’ve always been a technology person. Whenever I visit my parents it’s a miracle if I don’t have to fix the computer, tv, camera, or somebody’s cell phone. But there’s also a part of me that is drawn to nature as well, so the main things that stuck with me from discussions in this class have to do with the relationships between nature and technology. As I was preparing for my painting and doing some research about it, I started to see two different sides of the issue emerge.

Carlton Ward and the Power of Images

Although he’s a lot more recent than many of the other artists we’ve talked about in class, Carlton Ward has many similar objectives to traditional nature photographers such as Ansel Adams.

Clay Ranch, Putnam County

Ward started out photographing rain forests and deserts in Africa before turning his camera closer to his home of Florida. Despite the Everglades being drastically different from most of the national parks, the same qualities can be seen in how Ward documents the area.

Everything in Moderation

My last post was a little political as well, but I guess it’s hard to escape it these days. I’ve been hearing such extremist opinions and views coming from both sides of the political spectrum, and frankly it’s exhausting. The majority of people I’ve personally talked to don’t feel that strongly one way or another. Obviously, they’re not completely neutral because everyone has one issue or another that they care about or affects them. But in general, most people I talked to were moderate, leaning one way or another.

So what does this have to do with national parks and the environment? I’ve noticed that a lot of people who get involved with environmental issues tend to get carried a little overboard with it. Even if the individual is moderate, the overall image that environmentalists have is very extreme. You know the type.

I think the goals that most of these people have are honorable, and I actually agree with a lot of them, but I think that they way people go about it is all wrong.

Grand Canyons and Fiscal Cliffs

In the wake of all the politics of the past few months, there’s been a lot of talk now about a deadlocked Congress and the looming fiscal cliff. The article I found from Google News talks about how this could affect the national park system.

Nature, Technology, and the Human Attention Span

I’ve had this idea for a while now, and when we started talking about our final project in this class I thought it could fit in. Knowing me, I won’t ever get it done on my own without a clear deadline, so hopefully I can combine my idea with this class and I’ll actually do it!

I’m taking a painting class this semester, and I’d forgotten how much I loved it, so I was hoping to do a painting for this project. My major, though, is graphic design, and both my jobs are in graphic design, and pretty much everything else I do is related to technology. I spend most of my days in front of computers. At first it was hard for me to relate nature to what I’m surrounded by every day. The more I thought about it, though, and the more I read, I drew some connections between the two and how people interact with them.

Asher Durand’s Kindred Spirits

Asher Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849

Asher Durand’s Kindred Spirits (1849) at first appears to be a picturesque landscape, but upon closer inspection it has undertones of man’s dominance of nature. The painting features two men- painter Thomas Cole and his friend, writer William Cullen Bryant- standing on a rocky outcropping overlooking a river valley. The landscape is very typical for the time. The scene is framed by a cliff on the right side and a group of trees on the other. It even has the stereotypical storm-blasted tree in the lower left corner.

While the painting consists of mostly nature, it is clearly not the focus of the artwork. The two figures are near the center of the painting and there is nothing obstructing our view of them. They are looking out at the landscape, surveying it. It shows their mastery over nature. The landscape is there for their viewing alone. Even the title of the painting shows that the point of the painting is not the natural environment, but the men in it and their reactions and interactions to it. Either way, nature is just a backdrop for the conquests of men.

Man-made National Parks

As I was reading Frederick Law Olmstead’s Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865  for next class, I came across an idea that we’ve touched upon before, and it really bothered me. Near the end of his writing, Olmstead is going through the details of the plan to preserve Yosemite as a national park and discussing the more administrative side of things. He outlines a plan for the upkeep and preservation of a national park. I think the word he used was “maintenance.” This strikes me as so unnatural, it’s almost laughable. The average visitor may not realize how much effort goes into keeping the “natural” landscape exactly how it is, but once you get a glimpse of that, it takes away from the overall effect of the park.

Yosemite Valley utility rehabilitation

Man-made vs. Natural in the works of Loutherbourg

Coalbrookdale by Night (1801) and An Avalanche in the Alps (1803) both by Phillip James de Loutherbourg have opposite subject matter but strikingly similar compositions. This similarity draws comparisons between the two works and can be seen as either praise for or critique of the Industrial Revolution.

Phillip James de Loutherbourg, “An Avalanche in the Alps,” 1803

Phillip James de Loutherbourg, “Coalbrookdale by Night,” 1801

Nature and Perception

I had a really hard time trying to think of something to write about, but one thing that really stuck out to me from our discussion in class (and I don’t even remember who said it) was the idea of art as a second-hand knowledge of nature. I’m kind of fascinated with the idea that artists look at nature and make it “better,” or idealize it in some way, and then people would look at the paintings and create landscapes to look like those images. It creates a distance between people and nature, while still making them think that they’re close to it.

Albert Bierstadt, “Looking Down Yosemite Valley,” 1865

Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley, CA