CulturalNature Arga #2

The Landscape And Its Semiotic Discourse

Landscape, as a view, refers to a specific point of view over a scenery or specific area of a territory with particular natural and/or cultural characteristics. As a noun, it’s related to a representation of this point of view. As a discipline, it refers to a particular field of disciplines like painting and photography, which deals with these representations. As a verb, it refers to the act of shaping a territory with the intent of making him more pleasant and useful. (Lorch, 2002)

The landscape is a social phenomenon that can be perceived according many different points of view and characteristics. It consists and it’s formed by natural and cultural forces that can be studied and identified by a wide range of disciplines. In the context of the audio-visual interactive installation CulturalNature Arga#2, the landscape is thought as a verb (to landscape), as a social practice that acts over and transforms a particular space.

J.T.W. Mitchell (1994) identifies two ways of approaching the concept of landscape –as a representation and perception– and adds a third one –as a media in its own. The landscape, when it refers to a representation, on one side, may assume itself as a progressive movement in the direction of a purification of the visual field and, on the other side, as perception, it can assume itself as a process of contemplation and naturalisation of cultural and social constructions. Besides these two, and in a postmodern perspective, Mitchell refers to landscape as an allegory to the social and psychological that needs to be deconstructed, underlining that the landscape is a media on its own that carries messages related with the space, the subject and the activities.