Environmental Aesthetics

Created: Wed Jun 18 2025 20:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Word vomit and notes on readings mixed with some thoughts

Notes on Environmental Aesthetics from Stanford article

So did terms like "picturesque" and "sublime" come from philosophers? I wonder what other words come from philosophy that describes art.

Kant

Wilderness

"Nature's masterpieces"

Park systems derived from the idea of picteresque, to protect the visual, the beauty of landscapes.

"positive aesthetics" - John Muir. Ugliness is when human intervenes, while everything in nature is beautiful, even environmental disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes.

Motorized tourism

"One line of thought, for example, argued that because nature is not intentionally designed, it cannot be aesthetically appreciated (Mannison 1980; Elliot 1982; though see Elliot 1997)." Who thought this...robots?

"Should we aim to experience and appreciate the widest variety of environments, or should we instead cultivate our attachments to those select few places to which we feel some special, affective attachment?" - What I think about on do we actually need to travel to appreciate what we have?

Natural Environmental Model

"sense of place"

cognitive vs non-cognitive / conceptual vs non-conceptual / narrative vs ambient

"anthropogenic climate change is creating unprecedented and unpredictable types of “mixed environments” that may not fit the aesthetic concepts of the past"

Aesthetic Protectionism

Positive Aesthetics

Biodiversity

"rewild" as a term

"Tourist Traffic"

“new aesthetics of strangeness and uncertainty”

"the role of sound in environmental appreciation (J. Fisher 1998, 1999; Dyck 2016; Prior 2017)" Would like to know more about this since it can relate to giving a voice to rivers. But one thing I keep on thinking about is our projection on non-human things. Can we truly do understand and do justice to non-human entities?

Ecological Aesthetics

Global Perspectives

Back to Sublime and Picturesque

The Aesthetics of Animals

Mediated Appreciation

Climate Change and Aesthteics

Notes on Performing Nature by John Andrew Fisher

The paper addresses whether we can appreciate nature through a performance model rather and takes inspiration from the arts as references.

Performing existing works

An orchestra performing a musical piece or an actor performing a scripted play. Here there is a existing material and there's a complete ending. Relating to nature, there is a existing material that is independent of us and that we should respect it, similar to how we should respect the original creation of a work when performing it.

Performing as improvisation

Muscians jamming or an actor playing the yes and game in improve. Still working within parameters because for music, you're playing within a musical range or scale and for actors, you're still doing improve under the circumstance for comdey and laugther and the absurd. For nature, this model is attractive because nature is an unbounding and unpredictable at times.

Performing as performance-art

The artist, the moment, the materials in-front of them and the uniqueness. "In performance-art either there are no obvious materials or the materials are said to be ideas." (Fisher 23). Critique here for using this model with nature is that artists use whatever they can to make their point, whetehr it's respecting or about nature.

Author tries to shift our perspective on land art as being a performance rather than scultpures. Fisher poses questions rather give answers and it's up the reader to make a conclusion. Or rather, are the questions rhetorical?

With performance, there must be an audience. When peforming nature though, who is the audience? It is us, the viewer. We are performing for ourselves. We take notice what we want from nature.

Andy Goldsworthy

Artworks that uses materials of the environment the artwork is situated. For example, fallen leaves on the ground, rearranged by colour to create a striking visual that contrasts what we normally see in nature yet, still be in nature. What kind of art is this?

Fisher does note that Goldsworthy artworks are not performace-art because the materials are used too freely. I guess he means, is the artist really examining what the leaf is a material and using it for it's capabilities? In the sense, no other than using the colour of the leaves.

To appreciate nature through a performance model, it is to respect nature and to apprecaite it as nature.

Ends with the problem of documentation and capturing a performance or artwork. This then aligns with the reproduction issue of artworks, but specifically about the point of appreciating nature as nature since we are actually not in front of the artwork which is situated in nature. So can we truly appreciate through a reproduction? In this sense, we would be appreciating the documentation, the moment, and the idea.

Notes on From Allen Carlson to Richard Long: The Art-Based Appreciation of Nature by Marta Tafalla

Allen Carlson and NEM (natural environment model)

Thought: if there's a relationship to the knowledge of art through theory and history, and making the connection to appreciating nature through a natural science perspective, then could we go back and use this logic of knowing about the science of colours and perception to have a true appreciation of art?

Criticism against NEM

"does landscape painting teach us to appreciate nature?" (Tafalla 499)

Land art developed in 60s and 70s at the same time with the new developments of philo of nature. Land art was an answer to landscsape painting, in the way that they were site specific, and forced people to view them in their location (or through documentation), which prompts people to wonder about the surrounding environment that the artwork is in rather than art that is framed and viewed in a gallery.

Land art is not mimesis which landscape painting is. Although, there could be an argument that it's not just representational (painting) because if it's expressive, then it's trying to capture somethingt that is abstract, like a feeling, a fleeting moment.

For land art to show us appreciation of nature, it shouldn't be destructive or altering the landscape that isn't aligned with nature itself. Example the author gives is Richard Long who walks as his medium. As he goes back and forth in a line, it eventually leaves a path. Similar to paths we see in urban environments where people cut through an area even though there's a designed path, but usually there's a shorter path people want and they will take it. While the urban environment is about efficency and speed and fighting against a designed environment, Richard Long, is using his walking path to demonstrate his time with nature. The path created is harmless and eventually with fade away.

What remains are photos of the work. It's giving a bit Nazca lines and crop circles vibes but in an art context.

Arte Povera - Perhaps using this art period because it originates from the 60s/70s and has a similar ethos by using unconventional materials of the time for art that could be considered hodge podge. More on arte povera: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/arte-povera

The author makes note of the criticism from Carlson and that his medium and subject was the landscape painting and some other land art but disregards other artworks. Although this statement "Long’s is an art that consists of entering into nature, passing through it, experiencing it in three dimensions, with all five senses, getting to know it, exploring it and living it." (Tafalla 508) Is from the point of view of the artist. So its the act of making art, doing this performance as a solo person is what constitutes appreciation, but for only one person if we are to take into consideration this immersive experience as being the way for appreciating nature.

However, it's not about being immersive in nature is what produces knowledge about nature. By seeing remnants of a path, Long is showing us that walking is a simple act (for those able-bodies) to connect with nature. It's a path that you can take again, and someone else too since you forged it for them. Making you not only connect with nature, but also humanity. To align with performance-art, it is the body and the mind that is the central piece yet there's no literal depiction of human in the documentation.

Notes on Appreciation and the Natural Environment by Allen Carlson

To appreciate, we first are able to distinguish what is part of an artwork and what isn't. The word used is aspection, which is a way to actively look, in another word, observation.

"In creating a painting, we know that what we make is a painting. In knowing this we know that it ends at its frame, that its colors are aesthetically important, but where it hangs is not, and that we are to look at it rather than, say, listen to " (Carlson 267).

Paul Ziff - aspection also relates to recognizing art styles and how they inform how an artist or viewer sees the works.

While this paper is focused on the appreciating the natural environment, the above statemetns about art is used as an introduction to setup why these models do not work for aesthetic appreciation in nature.

Object Model

Landscape Model

Environmental Model

Bibliography

CARLSON, Allen, 1979. Appreciation and the Natural Environment. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 37, no. 3, p. 267. DOI 10.2307/430781.

FISHER, John Andrew and INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ENVIRNMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 2007. Performing Nature. Environmental Philosophy. Vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 15–28. DOI 10.5840/envirophil200741/23.

PARSONS, Glenn and CARLSON, Allen, 2024. Environmental Aesthetics. In : ZALTA, Edward N. and NODELMAN, Uri (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online]. Fall 2024. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved from : https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/environmental-aesthetics/ [accessed 15 June 2025].

TAFALLA, Marta, 2010. From Allen Carlson to Richard Long: The Art-Based Appreciation of Nature. . Vol. 2.

To Read Possibly

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/digital-vision-and-the-ecological-aesthetic-1968--2018-9781350051836/

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