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Technology informs the construction
of subjectivity. In Gilpin’s reference to the camera obscura, human sight
takes as its model mechanical projection: "The imagination becomes a camera
obscura, only with this difference, that the camera represents objects as
they really are; while the imagination, impressed with the most beautiful
scenes, and chastened by rules of art, forms its pictures, not from the
most admirable parts of nature; but in the best taste" (Three Essays
52). As Martin Jay has points out in Downcast Eyes, sight is a privileged
epistemological tool . Our way of seeing and thinking about the world around
us is informed by the camera obscura and its historical derivative, the
camera. These machines define the position of the interiorized observer
to the outside world (Crary Chapter 2). By setting landscape aesthetics
next to the aesthetics of Kodak, I want students to explore how the camera
works in relation to the picturesque. My hope is that they discover
some basic assumptions about how observers in the 19th century and the present
represent their relationship to the world. The dominant way of seeing both
then and now is what Jay calls "Cartesian perspectivalism," a method of
perception that represents space and the subjects and objects in that space
according to the rules of Euclidean geometry. Developing the historical
relationship between optics, the picturesque, and the camera de-naturalizes
the Cartesian scopic regime. By disturbing the relationship between sight
and truth, including the picture as a true representation and tour guides
as accurate documents of places, students can begin thinking of other modes
of representing place and experience.
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In my "Optics and Aesthetics" course,
during the first half of the semester I work with students to help them
understand Cartesian perspectivalism. The class reads sections of Descartes’s
Optics with Jonathan Crary’s commentaries from Techniques of the
Observer, then turns to Burke, Gilpin, and various Romantic works that
incorporate the picturesque. As a mid-term project, students compare
and contrast the picturesque with Kodak’s web site on how to take pictures.
They then go into the field and take "picturesque" snapshots according to
the guidelines set out by Kodak and by the picturesque aesthetic. They put
these photos online with commentaries on each and with links to passages
from authors we have studied. The second half of the semester is spent working
on a phenomenological critique of the way of seeing established in the first
half of the course. In class, we look at how new media, particularly the
web and MOO, reconfigures our representations of space. As a final project,
students add to their picturesque web site other decidedly non-picturesque
photos of the same spot with an eye toward other ways of providing a "feel"
for the place. Additionally, we discuss web page designs and site architecture
that facilitate their non-picturesque representations.
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Using the web and MOO to discuss landscapes
adds a new dimension to understanding representation of place. I ask
students to take snapshots of a place and then have them use the photos
in a group of web pages designed to represent that space. Having students
build web pages that in their form suggest the ideas from the content of
their argument leads students to engage the problem of constructing representational
spaces. The images, font, background color, links and word choice
all become part of their attempt to convey the "genius of the place."
As students produce their own representation or "virtual guide" to a place,
they begin to ask different questions about the authors we've studied. To
represent place they must model their writing according to the abstract
discourse of Gilpin or the intimate journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, or they
may use both discourses and set them against each other in a series of web
pages. As they construct image and text in their sites, they look
at the way Gilpin uses illustrations in his tour guide, and they reconsider
Constable's letters about his paintings.
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Importantly, the words and images
used as links between pages become a part of the argument since the reader
is asked to construct the relationship between the two pages via the connecting
link. In the logic of linking pages, what words and images should
provide portals to other aspects of a landscape? The dizzying connections
Wordsworth makes in his Snowdon passage from The Prelude invite students
to think about how to link disparate elements in a landscape we half see
and half create. In contrast, the methodical categories of Gilpin's and
Wordsworth's tour guides provide other ways of moving through space.
My hope is that through their own creative project, students will discover
how the epistemologies that inform the landscape aesthetic of the Romantic
period effect the way writers and artists of the period both saw and presented
the land. By having students use cameras to capture images of the
land they have chosen to represent, I am asking them to work within the
same mechanical optics that dominated much of landscape aesthetics.
Of course, as they place these images on web pages, the shift in representational
medium allows students the possibility of breaking out of Cartesian perspectivalism
as a model for mediation between viewer and object viewed.
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In addition to web pages, students
visit MOO rooms to develop a sense of space. (See student
instructions.) The MOO is a non-space; that is, there is no "space"
other than a screen with words and, perhaps, some images. Yet, depending
on the words used to describe the MOO "room" students act differently in
each place. After logging and discussing MOO landscapes in Villa Diodati,
I ask students what verbal cues caused them to react the way they did to
the space. The result is a discussion about the role of text and the
role of imagination in creating space. Such a discussion enables them
to see Romantic texts in a new light. The interaction in the MOO helps
defamiliarize the act of reading landscape texts and allows for new interpretive
strategies in reading. They begin asking what is the role of proper
nouns that are embodied as objects in the MOO room? What is the movement
of the narrator throught the space? What verbs predominate? What descriptive
words caused me as a MOO character to act differently in the room than the
narrator in the poem? Additionally, the MOO players see slight differences
in the room, and each player acts on these differences through the MOO conversation.
"Seeing" or reading and imagining differences provides a classroom
discussion concerning what we assume about nature and how to act in nature.
Some students treat the MOO room as a utopic nature place. Others
treat the space with suspicion or even contempt, preferring a narrative
poem with its familiar cues or finding a digital and textual representation
of nature to be absurd. Such moments are important for understanding
how mediation—be it paper or digital—effects representation of
place and how any description creates a "virtual" world.
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Often, students who consider themselves
poor readers but quite skilled in computers (which includes a disproportionately
large number of students at Georgia Tech where I teach) find themselves
drawn into the problems of representing space as they begin playing with
their hypertext documents. They debate on how to best represent the land
and what discourse best represents their experience of interacting
with the land. The overarching question becomes, "How can I make the
land into a landscape and what price do I pay for such a representation?"
While I have not tried this approach, such moments seem ripe for exploring
issues laid out in Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology" and
treatments of nature developed by eco-criticism and Green Romanticism. Admittedly,
a good deal of class time gets diverted from the study of Romantic texts,
and the class's detailed reading of a select few texts leaves little time
for a broad coverage of the period; however, I find the questions raised
in class and the engagement of the students in their projects to be more
important and more far reaching than I am able to accomplish with a wider
range of the period texts.
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While landscape aesthetics circa
1800 seems quite distant and inaccessible to most students, taking pictures
with a disposable camera is rather commonplace. By allowing students to
explore Romantic texts through a contemporary "lens," students find the
texts more approachable. They have little problem talking about their experiences
and their photography. Eventually this freedom of discussion transfers to
their discussion of Romantic texts. Then, as I ask them to discuss their
photos in relation to the Romantic texts,
the task seems less daunting. Kodak and landscapes are not a perfect fit—nor
should they be. The differences are important for putting the two cultures
and activities in context. For example, good taste is a cue for class and
education in landscape aesthetics. Photography in the late 1800s had similar
class, education, and gender distinctions, but by the 1900s this gradually
fades, making photography simple and accessible to virtually everyone (West
Chapter 2). I use Kodak and the picturesque as a starting place for beginning
the conversation by which the students' culture and the Romantics' culture
can speak to one another. In this conversation, students bring as much to
the class with their opinions about photography and sense of place as I
do in presenting them with Romantic texts. By the end of the semester, their
sense of what a photo is and does gets placed within a much larger conceptual
field of representation from landscapes of the 1800s to digital technology
of 2000. Conversely, Romantic texts become for the students not simply historical
moments of seeing but a vantage point to explore concerns over optical perceptions
still vital to us today.
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