www.iopm.nl
TUTOrS:
Michiel Pouderoijen and Denise Piccinini, assignment coordinators
and tutors of Landscape Architecture ON site, being part of Oerol
2013
(Elective MSc2 – Chair Landscape Architecture at the TU Delft)
STUDenTS:
Kaegh Allen, Ilse van den Berg, Erik van der Gaag, Charlotte Grace,
Bart de Hartog, Rogier Hendriks, Doris van Hooijdonk, Marleen
Klompenhouwer, Emiel Meijerink, Eva Nicolai, Pépé Niemeijer,
Sarah Roberts
SPOnSOrS:
Delft Infrastructures & Mobility Initiative
DIMI, Stichting NHBOS, Emmerik Milieufonds
Senz Umbrellas
InTrODUcTIOn : 4-15
cAbIneTS : 16-71
MAPS : 72-77
TUbeS : 78-87
ThAnkS : 91
This booklet shows the results of a project developed by TU Delft in a Master elective course offered by the chair of Landscape Architecture: Landscape Architecture ON site, being part of Oerol Festival 2013. The aim of the project was to express the landscape of Terschelling into a temporarily project during the Oerol festival on Terschelling Island from June 12th through the 23rd, 2013.
The chair of Landscape Architecture at TU Delft was invited three years ago to contribute to the discussion about the Wadden Island with particular emphasis on Terschelling. The question was how to become an active part of the coming editions of Oerol, since the festival is going in the direction of more permanent interventions in the landscape. Further, the festival is leading the way in designating close relationships between nature and culture, and between landscape and inhabitants. The chair has been contributing since then with projects inside the “expedition program” and participating in seminars. The first project for Oerol was designed in 2010. Since then, the chair has contributed every year, titled “Sense of Place”, wherein the landscape of the Wadden area and that of Terschelling was discussed by artists, landscape architects, ecologists and curators.
Oerol has a long tradition of landscape and location art and is one of the major international centres of development in this field. With the island as a source of inspiration and stage for broad programming, the Oerol festival has a leading artistic profile with a focus on culture, nature and experimentation. Each year, Oerol selects approximately twenty innovative and experimental projects that fit within the overall perception of nature and culture. The ‘expedition program’ includes projects from all disciplines and mixed forms, such as short presentations, performances, landscape art, theatrical films and installations.
Our contribution to the expedition program this year is called ‘The Institute of Place Making.’ It is an interactive project which explores and makes visible the experiences of visitors and inhabitants in the landscape of Terschelling. The project is a result of several weeks of teaching, workshops, external lectures, sites visits, and brainstorming sections. It ultimately developed into a project wherein people were asked to take a closer look at the landscape and heighten their awareness of the island by answering the question: “What is your most sacred ‘place’ on Terschelling, and why?”
‘LOngwAy bIcycLe SyMPhOny’ PrOPOSAL
PrOceSS
For the 2013 course agenda, the process was structured into three main phases and a conclusive reflection. The introductory phase was focused on reading and discussing concepts and examples to construct a framework of references, comprising a field trip to explore the site and a more rational investigation in the atelier. The notions involved in this specific project for Oerol included aesthetics of art, crafts, temporality, interaction with the public, use of natural or artificial materials in relation to nature, being part of a building process, and methods like “learning by doing” implicit in the act of making. During a three-day introductory field trip to Terschelling, the context and identity of the place was defined by students mainly by sensory perception. The main idea of the trip was to make a definition of place by experiencing it through the senses and by searching for the natural patterns, materials, and stories related to it. These first impressions and experiences from the excursion to Terschelling were the starting point for further investigation in the atelier in a more rigorous manner. Students went on studying and deepening some aspects they have found on site like the morphology of the island, the tide, wind, vegetation, etc. Experience of the place and results of the research formed the base for the project, which puts specific aspects of the landscape on stage at the Oerol festival.
The second phase consisted of the development of concepts and materialization. Experiences and ideas generated during the field trip and studies in the atelier have led to several concepts for an intervention in the location that creates or enhances a ‘sense of place’ (pictured left). These concepts were explored and developed in small groups which were constantly changing to generate as many ideas as possible, check them, step over own limitations, reaching the unexpected. It is important to emphasize the fact that during the process the students were not working on one’s own idea through the end. Instead they were working on several ideas at the same time, since just one concept will be built during the festival and considering the production of concepts as a main objective.
The third phase consisted of the development of the chosen concept to be built. The chosen conceptwhich has evolved during the design process to an open and complex system where several of the other ideas the students have developed so far are included. It mirrors a process we have been through proposing a design as process instead where the visitor plays the main role pointing out their favorite places on the island and handing the essence of the place in a test tube. It certainly has a potential to be explored not only this year but also in the years to come due the fact, as already said, it is a process starting this year with an inventory. For the students this project has been a great challenge and experience. In general they develop ‘paper projects’ based upon a specific site and brief, often enhanced by an intelligent narrative. In this case they had actually to built the project by themselves and interact with the public which bring some important aspects related to the physical act of making things like the sense of accomplishment when it was finished and the tacit knowledge being acquire through practice.
PrOjecT – The InSTITUTe Of PLAce MAkIng
The Institute of Place Making discovers and makes visible the notion of place and how it evolves. This is done by mapping, categorizing and analyzing feedback of visitors and inhabitants on their experience with Terschelling’s landscape. The results have been published on a website (www.iopm.nl) with a map of the island indicating the values visitors and inhabitants endow to a variety of places found on the island. An interactive classification and exhibition of the results took place at the Institutes’ laboratory during Oerol at ‘Duinmeertje Hee’.
cOLLecTIng
The test tube is used as a symbol and medium to activate thinking about place. A small label is attached to the test tube, with instructions and space to fill in personal information: age, gender and place of residence, and a space to fill in data about the place. This data includes a small map to mark the location, an indicator of weather, and the time of the day, in addition to a small space to note the experience in a few keywords or drawings. With this information, we can categorize the places handed in by the visitors and even make some statistics about intersecting data. Further, conversations with visitors about their place have been collected during the festival in the form of audio and video fragments. The visitors were allowed to keep their test tubes for some days to truly find and experience their place before returning it to us.
PrOceSSIng
One could visit the Institute at ‘Duinmeertje Hee’ to have the results, test tube and completed label, processed. There, the visitor was brought into a pseudo-scientific world of staff in white lab coats who received the visitor and extracted the data with them in a couple of steps: making a photograph of the test tube, pinning the place as accurate as possible on a large wall map, asking some additional questions to categorize the data like wet or dry, hot or cold, dead or alive, and then bringing the data form the label into a digital interactive map on the website.
ArchIvIng
The visitor was then asked to go into the forest and put their test tube in one of the white cabinets in the ‘open air archive’. These cabinets have poetic names like ‘the cabinet of natural unity, ‘the cabinet of immeasurable colors’ or ‘the cabinet of view and insight’. In every cabinet, a more detailed classification is made within the theme of it. After some days a collection of experiences was built up in the cabinets in the form of a cabinet of curiosities that other visitors could watch and study. The cabinets were installed in the forest in accordance with the old dunes’ topography, the raster of trees and the patterns on the forest floor, forming a group of ‘objets trouvés.
The visitor had to walk, from our almost always crowed base camp, place by the lake, for about 50 meters the forest in, the entrance of our archive. Sounds of birds and rustling of leaves led a small path among the trees and bushes to an inner open space made by disposing the nine cabinets about twenty meters distance from each other forming a group of white strange objects among the pine trees and sandy elevations covered by moss, pine needles and pine apples. White painted small closets in different shapes and sizes against a brown, shadowed surrounding. Along the ten days of the festival and more than six thousand visitors a network of paths were cleared formed
reSULTS
The potential which has been created with this project has many facets to be explore as a research, as a base for a landscape art peace or as bottom up method to convey people perception on spaces and landscapes.
The results of this year are certainly determined by the fact that there were a festival taking place and by the fact our base camp had a central place on the island, however, the principle can be repeated on a different moment or at a different location being applicable everywhere. It certainly gives us an overview of places and landscapes people appreciate the most on Terschelling and why. It also open the possibility of developing a method to approach people on their perception of nature and landscapes. This year our research like project has a cognitive (psychological) approach based on interviews where the appreciation of a place was related to gender, age, weather and time and of course a socio-cultural background distinctive of the population visiting the festival. For a more elaborate investigation, the subjective experience of the visitors could be integrated with more objective and quantifiable data and knowledge of experts. The investigation could also be placed in a broader context, taking the form of a research applicable elsewhere. The next step could comprise of making the results operable for landscape architectonic design and they certainly can be used as start point of a project next Oerol. By reading the tags and looking to the test tubes we can already divided groups of responses into, for instance, responses reacting to visible and tangible materials and those reacting to ephemeral events, memories and stories. Or those about encounters on the landscape surface versus those about processes involving deep layers on the landscape.
The other important aspect of the project is the platform for interaction among the participants (visitors) which has been created by the open air archive in the forest where all reactions (test tubes + tags) were placed. Over there a spontaneously process, similar to a bottom up one with a great participatory value, took place. It was like a network made by an extremely fragile infrastructure of thoughts, memories, wishes, comments, etc.
People were very enthusiastic and grateful by the fact they could somehow externalize his/her opinion, share them experiences with others, to be inspired by others contributions about their own favourite places on Terschelling. We can assume that this has certainly to do with the fact most of the visitors had built an emotional relation to places on the island and have the need to share their perception. Those places become symbolic taking part of a collective memory. Most of them are pieces of nature and landscapes some others referring to processes related to time and weather conditions making the relation in between the location and time very present like the case of the ‘draadgentiaan’(cabinet of time). Those landscapes are all mapped and constitute a base for a new interventions, they are somehow turned into monuments, referential places on Terschelling.
EN/ The Institute of Place Making (IOPM) investigates your
experience of place on Terschelling. What makes a place? Where is
your place on the island and why is it important to you? We would
like to know more about your sense of place to build an interactive
database for further research. Each day the collected data will be
processed and translated into pop-up manifestations that explore
the phenomenon of place-making on Terschelling. Visit http://
www.iopm.nl and come to our institute to experience more!
NL/ Het Institute of Place Making (IOPM) onderzoekt jouw Sense
of Place op Terschelling. Wat maakt een plaats? Waar is jouw plaats
op het eiland en waarom is die belangrijk voor je? We zouden
graag meer weten over je gevoel van plaats om een interactieve
databank voor verder onderzoek op te bouwen. Elke dag worden de
verzamelde gegevens verwerkt en vertaald in pop-up manifestaties
die het fenomeen van plaats-maken op Terschelling verkennen.
Bezoek http://www.iopm.nl en kom naar ons instituut om meer
te ervaren!
The development of the theme came from an interest on the different methods of measuring and experiencing time. Relative time and absolute time can deal with completely different categories over the same experience, which in combination with the ways to measure time became a fascination. To communicate this to the visitors I chose to use objects that were quite blunt in expressing the connection with time, like a clock, and to combine this with more subtle visualizations of time like young leaves/fallen leaves, stainless screws and rusty ones. Together with the (self-made) sundial on top of the cabinet this became the visual/physical container for the participants to archive their places in the Cabinet of Time. “We have nothing of our own except time, which even the homeless can experience.” Baltasar Gracián
Basically there are two main theories of what time actually is and how it functions. The realistic, or Newtonian, approach says time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe in which events happen in a sequence. The other method (supported by Immanuel Kant ao) states the exact opposite: time is not an object or an event and thus can’t be measured. These two notions provided the two main categories for the web: absolute time and relative time.
In the landscape these two are continuously overlapping, fading into each other or opposing. Absolute time represents our structured day to day experience of the world: 8 hours of work per day, 8 “time-off”, and 8 to sleep; 5 days of work and 2 days off per week, 40 out of 52 weeks in a year, and so on. Rational, fixed, easy-to-grasp portions of organized time as a foundation for efficient cycles to maximize production, according to Guy Debord.
The other approach deals more with how we experience life without trying to see time as a fixed element. Relative time has a more ‘sensible’ approach: for instance being born, growing up, getting old, dying. It does not have strictly confined boundaries, nor does it measure exact periods of absolute time. It is about how we experience it, and which words we have created to find a way to grasp the description of certain periods within a definition. Its more focused on natural processes, and the principles we can’t (yet) explain scientifically.
Measuring time has been done in many ways, but our methods over the years have turned the natural process of living with the elements (sun, water, plants) into a more absolute form. Atomic clocks now structure our lives, we have distanced ourselves from the rhythms provided by nature and chosen to overrule them with lamps and shutters. Still the organic form of time is visible in our daily lives, interfering with the absolute, and softening it.
The Dutch landscape is a great place to find the meeting point between absolute and relative time. The way we are designing our own nature and natural experiences, seems like we are trying to control time: taking what we need and
restoring what was there (only the ‘romantic’ natural aspects that we want). Making land from water for agriculture and setting loose wildlife in newly planted forests to reenact the days when these animals lived next to us.
One of the test-tubes that was placed in the Cabinet of Time dealt with a situation in which two different cycles of time meet: the man chose the small “draadgentiaan” as his favorite place on the island. It’s a freshwater-plant that trough the newly created dunes, polders and forests has started growing on Terschelling. The “Groene Strand” is the only place in the Netherlands where this plant grows, in the zone between the two eastward moving layers of primary and secondary dunes. He says: “This plant does not only connect time to the forming of a landscape; it also shows the temporariness of the moments within it”. A situation in which different cycles meet, moving over different spans of time but yet engaged in the same process.
In a text on this matter Luuk Boelens talks about two main types of the contemporary experience of space/time. The first one is the slow, natural one, dealing with subjects like archeology and architecture. The time we remember and in which we place most processes that happened in the past: a vast web of gradual change. A river crawling slowly through the landscape, something reminding us we should take time to appreciate.
The second field is one of the main conditions of our modern life, fast moving processes that can happen anywhere, anytime within microseconds. The digital age brought us a form of progress that gives us the ability to experience everything we want right when we want it. Whether it’s the real deal, flying to the other side of the world to see “real nature” the way it was, or the virtual/digital product that has been made from it by a television crew or someone with a fascination for remote places.
The clash of these two notions is our contemporary condition. Do we re-create and conserve the nature that was once there within the space that’s left? Or should we make natural experiences to-go, fast and intense for the 21st century consumer society? It is a paradoxical situation provoking discussion, visualized beautifully in a documentary by Frederic Wiseman, where the life of a one-day-fly along the highway is compressed into 15 minutes. While the one-day-fly circles around at his own pace for his whole life, cars pass by in a sort of hyperspeed, almost invisible to the human eye.
According to Heidegger time is a dimension in which these events can be ordered from the past trough the present into the future. We can leave the absolute, sequential experience of time by remembering our past and projecting our future. When you place this theory in the context of the experience of time in and about the landscape you find the friction in our policies. We base our visions of what the landscape should look like on how we believe it was in the past, seemingly unable to place ourselves and the way we deal with the landscape in the present. Will we find a balance between our digital, nanosecond life on a planet that was formed over an immense span of years?
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Kabinet van Natuurlijke Eenheid
“Nature is the distance between two cities.”
We know nature, but nature does not know us in the same way. We divided nature into nature and culture, and since then they coexist. This illustrates our strange and fascinating relation to nature. This relation has been the topic for writers and philosophers throughout history. One of which resides clearly in the collective memory: Jean Jacques Rousseau and his ideas about the impossibility of returning to an “original”, or natural ,state of being.
What does this mean for our experience of nature? Luuk Boelens describes in his essay Nature à diffuse vitesse how developments in transport have prompted different time-space experiences. We no longer have a continuous relation to nature, but we experience nature in its bits and pieces. In these moments we can feel connected or disconnected to nature and even still feel one with nature. The experience of feeling one with nature is what this cabinet explores. By selecting categories we investigate which elements are decisive in the experience of feeling one with nature.
For all eight drawers of the cabinet an element is chosen. The elements are the standard five elements: earth, fire, water, air and light. Next to these elements are minerals to expand deeper into the earth. Finally, life is added to these elements, as embodied by plants and animals.
The experience of being one with nature can become a place, much like Siddhartha Gautama who found enlightenment below a Bodhi tree. This tree in Bodhgaya has become a sacred place: a place for pilgrimage. This moment could be described as being one with nature by the element light. In mystic literature the moment of being one with everything always comes with a breeze of wind. The slow wind causes a resonance and can make a human resonate with the frequency of the universe. This could be seen as being one with nature by the element air.
In connection to these ideas, a question emerges. Do people still feel one with nature?
In short, yes, people do indeed relate to the idea of feeling one with nature. Throughout the Oerol festival, the cabinet received many 139 tubes. A wide variety of experiences have been recorded. With some of them it is not clear why people chose the cabinet, but most of them do relate clearly to the topic at hand. The size of the drawer did not limit the number of tubes because the biggest drawers housed the lowest number of tubes. The elements air (19%), animals (19%) and water (17%) received the greatest number of tubes.
Here follows a selection of the tubes collected which speak resonantly about unity with nature:
element light, 18 tubes (13%)
#2534: The essence of Terschelling is nature in diversity.
colourful, surprising, beauty, discovery.
element air, 27 tubes (19%)
#2259: Oxygen is needed for growth. On terschelling
there is plenty of, especially in Oosterend.
element animals, 26 tubes (19%)
#1420: where the boundaries of nature are opened up for
a moment
element plants, 18 tubes (13%)
#2143: with bare feet on the carpet of Mother earth
element minerals, 16 tubes (12%)
#143: finding things in nature, like a feather
element water, 23 tubes (17%)
#395: space, peacefulness, with water around you
element fire, 5 tubes (3%)
#2061: The house we rent every year during Oerol, a
beautiful spot with always good people and memories.
element earth, 6 tubes (4%)
#772: A meeting between man and nature, every time
again, pass this on like a estafet-baton.
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While researching the question: “What makes a place?”, two types of research emerge. One type of research delves into the opinion and expertise of the specialist (the designer or writer in this case), while the other explores the opinion and experience of the user (the visitor). The first type exists as a research in literature, while the second consists of interrogating the audience while using interviews or other media. By combining these two forms, two distinct values can be discovered, compared and analysed.
Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) suggests a few possibilities for placemaking in his book Space and Place. He indicates that space will become a place when physical boundaries are applied. Also other restrictions that are less physical can do the job: For instance, sight, colours, sound and time are named as actors. Tuan also writes: “What starts as undefined space will become a place when given value.” (p.6). In parallel to this description, Christian Norberg-Schulz (1980) writes about this phenomenom of placemaking while mentioning the Genius Loci, or the spirit of the place. In both cases, the visitor, the spirit, and his or her relation with a space is determining the place, and he or she is indicated as the place-maker. Starting from this mindset, the perspective of the visitor actually gives meaning to a piece of space, and further defines that place. In short, space, combined with meaning, creates place.
In the second part of the research, the visitor chose their most important boundaries (physical or non-physical) for space that created their favourite place. This included possibilities of sight, time, sound, landscape and/or any other category. For all these topics, research had been performed, and a cabinet had been created by one of many researchers from the Institute of Place Making. Since the experiment took place at a festival, it had to be taken into account that many results would be “diluted” or deformed throughout the process. Many visitors chose their cabinet for different reasons than as the indicator of a place (aesthetics, for example).
The Cabinet of Meaning consisted of a school desk where people were able to let space react with meaning, and to ultimately create a place. Here people would stop and think about the fact that their relationship with a piece of space. This meaning, in turn, actually created a new place. People wrote stories in the books located in the drawers. There was a book of memories and a book of visions, as two indicators of what meaning could represent to some. Stories were written in a guestbook. Other people were clearly aware of their ideas, expressing that there had been certain events and meanings that were strongly defining their places. Poems, anecdotes and memories were written down with the numbers of individual places, to relate them to the online activity on the Institute of Placemaking website. In the book of memories, beautiful stories about the island, but also about people, were written down. The book of visions featured stories about going back to shore, and worlds of forests where everybody could be themselves.
Literature
Norberg-Schulz, Christian. (1980). Genius Loci; Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. London: Academy Editions.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. (1977). Space and Place; The perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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The concept of the cabinet was to make a spectrum with the tubes: according to a colour spectrum the assignment for the visitors was to place their tube according to this spectrum in the right position. A little installation was made so the tube ends, consisting of glass parts, would form a spectrum. The hypothesis was that this spectrum would never be formed in the right way according to the placed example, because the island does not provide all the colours of the spectrum. The formed spectrum would show which colours are mostly available on the island. Next to that, the drawer was destined for the tubes with colour compositions, and the lowest closets were meant for the tubes with a lack of colours, so grey, white and black. Indeed, the result was that there are not that much different colours on the island. Many tubes with yellow flowers were brought in, and some with purple ones. Further most of the tubes contained green or brown tints, which are general colours that could be found almost everywhere. This, combined with the fact there were not many tubes with one specific colour in it, resulted in the absence of a real spectrum. However, the visitors created a cabinet of themselves. Since there was a packet with crayons in the cabinet, people started decorating in a sketchbook as well as on the cabinet. This resulted in a cabinet that looked a bit messy and bursted of colours, which suits the playful theme of the cabinet. Perception of colour
‘The problem with a subject as broad as colour is that in a desperate effort to do justice to the topic, we nearly always fail to say anything of any substance.’2 Individual perception is important in all cases, and other people’s perception in many cases, if we talk about the function and occurrence of colour. Also technology has a different perception. All these perceptions, in combination with tradition and bias of nature, make us look all different at objects. We can identify a colour, because we have a familiar reference, for instance the red of the London bus. We will all identify this as red, because it is commonly understood that this is red. But it’s getting harder when we have to compare our perception of an unfamiliar object. In some cases we can’t figure out what a colour is, because it might be (to one or both) an unfamiliar colour, that has not been acknowledged as a certain colour referring to a specific object. For instance comparing a sweater; one might think it is orange, and the other thinks it’s red.
Colours in nature
According to Peter Parks the colour spectrums, and the changes of it during the seasons, are mainly caused by four different pigments. The green of leaves is mainly caused by chlorophyll a and b. The yellow and reds are due to xanthophyl and carotene. The chlorophyll breaks down during change of temperature and the decreasing amount of light, the other pigments don’t. This causes the change of colour of the leaves. The difference in colours between tree species is caused by different ratios of the pigments. The colours of flowers are bright so they get maximum attention in nature. The flowers are visible so bees are drawn to get the nectar they need. In exchange they take and give pollen, so the plants can reproduce. In evolution humans developed the love for colours bright colours so it is possible to recognise ripe fruits, which is an inborn trait. In time, people gave a lot of symbolism to flowers. This is an example that represents the cultural factor. Cultural and natural (nature and nurture) factors make us differ in opinion about the types of nature we like. There is a natural habit for us to like brightly coloured flowers, but cultural habits play a role in how we deal with this. Perception is the keyword, and makes everybody look differently at the landscape.
The theme colour is a clearly objective theme, opposite to the other cabinets. Cabinets such as perception, time and nonsense are subjective and therefore multi-interpretable. Colour is a theme that does not require intellectual or poetical reasons, a nice colour is a nice colour, and if that is the reason for someone to mark the place as their favourite, then the choice is easily made. The question was whether people would prefer the subjective or the objective themes. The result was obvious, since the cabinet of perception (subjective) had the highest quantity of tubes. People really thought about their sense of place and looked further than just the definition they added to their tube. They enjoyed expressing their emotions in cabinets with subjective themes, as these themes allow more freedom of expression.
The most entries of the cabinet were different green species, such as ferns. The most entries of flowers were pink/purple orchids and common brooms. According to Staatsbosbeheer1, these species are indeed dominant on the island in terms of flower species. On the Boschplaat there are more species present, however, since this area is hard to visit, not much tubes had been filled in this area. There are a lot of other species on the Island, but most of them don’t have an evident colour, because the (green) colour is present in many different places in the world, and is not really essential for their place.
1. www.staatsbosheer.nl, (2013). Terschelling: Flora en Fauna, retrieved 1-7-2013, from http://www.staatsbosbeheer.nl/Natuurgebieden/Terschelling/ Flora%20en%20fauna.aspx
2. Parks, P., Colour in Nature, in Colour: Art & Science, Cambridge University Press, 1st Edition, Cambridge, 1995, pages 151-175
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When you go to a place that is hard to find or reach. Where you will eventually be rewarded with a view. Where you may get an insight.
n.
1. an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing. through intuitive understanding.
2. penetrating mental discernment. 3. Psychol.
a. an understanding of the motivations behind one’s thoughts or behavior. b. a recognition of the sources of one’s emotional or mental problem. n.
The faculty or act of clearly perceiving and understanding external things. The journeys that we take to find out who we are and what our place is in the world are amongst the most demanding but most rewarding we may take in our lives, as described in the article Sense of place – ‘’A sense of place contributes depth and understanding to what it means to be human”.
These journeys vary in distance and purpose, but they must be testing. They push us far. To the top of mountains or deep in the chasms of our minds – the valiant explorer must be well prepared.
‘‘Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.’’
Charles Lindbergh
Yi-Fu Tuan explains that “The notion of “distance” involves not only “near” and “far” but also the notions of past, present and future. Distance is a spatio-temporal institution.” The realm of this institution also extends into that of conscious experience – as Tim Creswell questions in ‘Place : A Short Introduction’ that ‘we cannot (phenomenologists would argue) be conscious without being conscious of something. Consciousness constructs a relationship between the self and the world. Thus the ultimate quest perhaps of finding place and of experiencing place is about becoming more conscious of ourselves ‘The only way human can be humans is to be in place’. So the importance of place is not only to do with distance, time and space but with emotion and experience.
‘Place can be as small as the corner of a room or as large as the earth itself: that the earth is our place in the universe is a simple fact of the observation of homesick austronauts…It is obvious that most definitions of place are quite arbitrary. Geographers tend to think of place as having the size of a settlement: the plaza within it may be counted a place, but usually not the individual houses, and certainly not that old rocking chair by the fireplace.’
Yi-Fu Tuan
But what determined the value of each place? Are some experiences more valid than others? Is a month long mountain trek more arduous than a timeless minute
Surely the road is worth walking as long as what we aim to achieve is to reach a point, through whatever means, to gain an enriched view of ourselves and the places we surround ourselves with.
‘The only source of knowledge is experience.’ Albert Einstein
The crux of the question about experiencing landscape and place to the fullest extent is therefore one about perception and perspective. Perception of Landscape ‘is such an image, a construct of the mind and of feeling’ as Muir describes in ‘Landscapes of the mind’; ‘The landscape as perceived by one person is not the same as that perceived by another, for each individual has in his/her mind his/ her own cultural and personality filters which select and distort the incoming information’. So the most powerful and valuable knowledge that one can gain is that of understanding what these filters may be and what distortions they place on our specific perception – in other words, a little insight is required.
“Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.” Hans Margolis
As for perspective – this requires by definition some distance, a certain level of remoteness to see the whole picture. To gain this detachment may lead us to the top of mountains, the roof of an abandoned building or perhaps hardest of all, requires a long hard look in the mirror. Also those trips may be internal, in the infamous words of psychedelic pioneer
Timothy Leary “To use your head, you have to go out of your mind” – this expression once removed from the polemic discourse of drug use expresses the issue about perspective. In our daily lives we run a tightly wound race, blinkers on. With the claustrophobic growth of connectivity, an unquenchable thirst for success and consumption and a homogenised landscape of fake lights and empty heads – it is hard to see through the haze. Gaining space to see how we are living and who we are is increasingly difficult – we have to try hard to find our personal vantage points. To gain that required bit of perspective.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”
William Blake
Outsight and Insight, the rewards for those who are willing to make the journey. To leave some time, to forge some distance, to clear some space. Thus making that place that resonates most deeply. Opening those dusty doors, showing clearer than ever that familiar yet distant figure. You.
Roberson, G and R Wilkie (2010) “Sense of Place” in Encyclopedia of Geography, B Warf, ed.
London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p2532-4. Cresswell. T (2004) Place: A Short Introduction. UK, Wiley-Blackwell.
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The theme of the 2013 Oerol festival can be viewed from various perspectives and includes many different sub-themes. In its essence, Sense of Place refers to subjective human reactions to places . With the Cabinet of Alone or Together, the intention was to build upon this subjective human aspect and to accommodate interests in a social facet of place making.
The Cabinet of Solitude gave shape to a simple classification by transforming a former desk into a quite abstract and symmetrical object with two archive boxes. One compartment provided storage space for the places which essentially resided in an “alone” situation and another accommodated found places in a “together” situation. Logically the participating visitors chose one of these two compartments to archive their essence of place. Keeping scales and seesaws in mind as references, both compartments were equally shaped. During the festival the cabinet literally would seesaw between alone and together, between the solitary island visitant and solitary groups of friends.
“Language has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone...” Paul Tillich
The manner in which people perceive their environment and their surroundings depends on several factors. Apart from purpose, perceptual equipment and mood, it also includes the distances maintained in encounters with other people. Space perceived by a solitary individual will have a different meaning compared to the same space perceived with more individuals in a group. Despite the fact that the aforementioned space would have the same geographical location, it could not be the same place.
According to geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, place is a unique entity which incarnates experiences and aspirations of people, a reality to be clarified and understood from the perspectives of the people who have given it meaning . Meeting and gathering seem to be key elements to this meaning of (favourite) place for many Oerol visitors. In the Cabinet of Alone or Together, places defined by the presence of other people have been flagged as favourite under one recurring basic condition: in the together box of the cabinet, all stories find their basis, purpose and focus in being together in the first place. We can state that in the case of a group place, the presence of other people is in focus. Judging from the submitted test tubes, the physical settings of these places then only seem to be a nice added bonus to the event-based place.
The conditions of group experiential space are dependent on the number of people involved: the sense of place in a rendezvous for two in the dunes is most likely associated with focus on the other person involved combined with the surrounding scenery. Meeting up with a bunch of friends in town or at the campsite is much more about interacting, being social and contains a more public
The alone compartment in the Cabinet of Solitude contains multiple subtypes. The first category of favourite alone places finds its origin in loneliness. In a moment of reflection, the sensory perception of these places is overshadowed by mostly a grave feeling of loss. These personal places have been made in the past and contain personal and intimate memories. In contrast, there were also test tubes archived based on the sensation of solitude. Far away from other human beings, these places focus on stunning surroundings, nature in combination with a feeling of infinite space and freedom. An increased sensory awareness emphasises on the self-conscious spectator of the place.
At the foreground of human awareness lies the appearance of human being. When there are no other humans involved in a place, the emphasise seems to be on the introverted individual. When a place is sensed by two or more persons at the same time, the relations between man and landscape take on rather different characteristics and tend to emphasise more on the other human being(s). In The Hidden Dimension, anthropologist Edward T. Hall describes various distances between human beings and their fellows. He states that how people are feeling toward each other at the time is a decisive factor in the distance used. At public distance (see figure), one can experience feelings of solitude or loneliness. Outside the circle of involvement, neither social nor personal interaction exist. At public distance, other human beings become peripheral objects in the surroundings of the place perceiver. People who are attending a casual social gathering tend to stay at a more social distance. In social space, people can act as individuals in the presence of others without being rude. According to Hall, visual detail in the face is not perceived, and nobody touches or expects to touch another person. At personal distance, there is a sense of closeness.
Whereas other people at social and public distance are perceived by mainly the visual and aural senses, at personal distance also smell and touch is used to interact with other beings. Personal space can be seen as a small protective bubble that one maintains between himself and others. Whether to be or not to be in this personal sphere is depended on the social relation with the other person. Close distance interaction with another person occurs in intimate space. Activities in intimate space include physical involvement such as love-making and wrestling. In intimate space, the surrounding landscape is faded into the background. The presence of the other person is clear and the dominant factor in the sense of place.
Roughly said, sense of place from a social point of view will depend on the amount of other people and both their distances and relations to each other. To be alone or together in the landscape of Terschelling brings along their own characteristics, focal points and unique experiences of place.
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Our observations and interpretations of our environment is done by all the different senses: smell, taste, sight, sound and touch. In the beginning of the development of the concept of the IOPM project, the Oerol theme of 2013 “Sense of Place” was a highly influential factor. The question arose, “How can we open all the senses of the visitors?”
Visibility is at first appearance the main observational sense of our environment. But when one focuses on all the different senses, other senses such as hearing and touch clearly embody potent capacities. People tend to assess places not only in the visible spectrum, but also in the invisible realm. This can be traced back to basic human instinct. Danger is not always visible, but our instinct should protect us from it. When our senses recognize that a place is not safe, this conclusion is reached from synthesis of the information gathered from all our bodily senses. Sound has a big influence in how we experience a place; it is an important orientation source for us and contains information about the environment which is not visible. The brain filters some sounds out so that other sounds can become clearer. For instance, living next to a highway can trigger the brain to diminish much of the recognizable noise after some time. This allows the body to more clearly hear the more significant sounds to identify the surroundings and to orientate with instinct to pinpoint, for example, where danger is coming from. While the IOPM project is not focused solely on our instincts, the above text is meant to clarify the importance of our “secondary” bodily senses in order to understand their role in the observation of place.
The study of landscape structure and functions, including the underlying ecological and anthropogenic processes, has traditionally relied on visual aspects without considering information of non-visionary cues. In the modern world, residential areas experience a significantly greater level of noise pollution. Since the industrial revolution, artificial sound gains a much bigger part in our environment. Many of the studies of sound in relation with landscape architecture are concerning noise caused by humans and industrial processes.
Here one can focus more on sound as part of our orientation and perceiving of a place. Sound has a value on which we can react; natural sounds have existed since the dawn of mankind while industrial sounds are a development of the last recent decennia. Reaction to sound happens instinctively. Since the industrial sounds have increased in recent years, human reaction has not yet developed significantly. If we desire to learn more about sound in places and how we orientate to it we need to focus on the natural sounds.
“Natural noises, especially the sound of water, are more appreciated than human or industrial noises. In this regard, the experiments carried out by Bjork, 1986 and Bjork, 1995, show how the sounds of water and of birdsong
(excepting alarm calls) have greater ability than human sounds to induce states of relaxation, as analyzed from selected psycho physiological parameters (heart rate, skin conductance and electromyography responses). The findings on natural soundscapes are consistent with those relating to the visual landscape. Likewise, it has been found that natural landscapes are particularly sensitive to the presence of man-made sounds” (Sound influences on landscape values, J. Luis Carles e.a., 1999)
On Terschelling, sound is a strong factor of the environment. The sounds of wind and sea are audible across the whole island. There are two strong sounds of natural forces present on Terschelling which cannot be denied. At the same time the island is a home for many different bird species such as the godwit or the lapwing. Sound has a strong connection with its environment and how the place is perceived. In some places sound is the strongest signal perceived. In order to record and analyze visitor perception of sound in the Oerol Festival, those actively noting sound as their main attractor to a sacered place are housed in the Cabinet of Sound.
The Cabinet:
Perception of sound is different for each person, but in terms of instinct there could be a coherence between the results. Is it possible to capture the sound of Terschelling in an image? In order to create a classification of sounds in the cabinet three questions were asked to the visitors:
1. Is the sound hard and overwhelming or is it gentle and soft? 2. At what time is the sound mainly active or the most beautiful?
3. Is the sound coming from the forces of nature, like the wind/sea, or is it the infill of the landscape, like the sound of the birds or the cracking of the shells? These three questions were visualized in three axes inside the cabinet into which the visitor could place their sound. Inside the cabinet many tubes where placed with the theme silence. By reading those tubes a question immediately arose: where does silence exist on the island? the silence seems to be the sound of the wind, the sound of the birds or the sound of the sea. Silence, in many cases, in fact meant the absence of the sound of humans and their machines.
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The cabinet of landscape archives and classifies the essences of the best places on Terschelling according to its landscape. This cabinet cannot be missed in this classification since the landscape on the island is very unusual in comparison to other regions of the Netherlands because of its variety. Terschelling contains different landscapes in a small area which can be experienced within a few hours. This variety is mostly created because of the unusual formation conditions and the influence of humanity.
Different landscapes on Terschelling
The landscape of Terschelling is more or less a remnant of the old shoreline of The Netherlands. The northern part of the country was separated from the sea by dunes, but because the sea level rose, the hinterland flooded with salt water. Nowadays, this flooded area is known as the Wadden Sea. The higher dunes formed barrier islands in between the rough North Sea and the calm Wadden Sea. One of those islands is Terschelling. Because Terschelling is a former dune the whole island existed out of the same type of landscape: dune landscape. But this changed with the passage of time. Because of the calm current in the Wadden Sea, clay could deposit on the south side of Terschelling; this resulted in mudflats. On the northern side of Terschelling were stronger currents and only rough sand could deposit which resulted in a beach.
But not all landscapes on Terschelling are formed by nature. A clear example of a manmade landscape is the polder. Farmers wanted to use the mudflats to keep animals and they built dikes on the mudflats to protect the land against the waves of the sea. Hereafter they drained the area by an orthogonal structure which consists of ditches and pumping machines. This resulted in an open polder landscape which was suitable to grow grass and to raise cows and sheep. The other landscape created by man are the pine tree forests which located on the higher elevations of the island. The pine trees were planted by the Dutch Forestry Commission to stop the erosion of the island by wind and to cultivate wood. The planted trees have huge impact on the landscape of Terschelling because they largely contrast with the openness of the dune area, the polder, and the beach.
Cabinet of landscape
The cabinet of landscape archives the essence of the best spots on Terschelling which owe their quality to the landscape. The cabinet classifies the different tubes by type of landscape and the amount of human interference. The white cabinet is a former filing cabinet with sixteen drawers: four vertical and four horizontal. The four vertical columns indicate the major landscape types of Terschelling: beach, dunes, forest and polder. The horizontal rows indicate the amount of human interference on the landscape: the bottom presents the most natural, while the top presents the most human. Each drawer contains a material that refers to an element of one of the landscapes. For example, one drawer is filled with wool which symbolises the sheep on the dikes in the polder.
The first column is about the beach, and the drawers contain sand, shells,
cabinet of Landscape
seaweed and towels. The lowest drawer is filled with the most untouched and oldest materials on the beach: coarse sand with a decalcified layer. The two in the middle contain shells (Mollusca) and seaweed (Chlorophyta) which are also natural elements.
The second column connotes the dunes and is filled with sand, moss, heath and marram grass. The most untouched material is within the lowest drawer and consists of a soil of fine sand with a decalcified layer. The two drawers in the middle are filled with moss (Bryophyta) and heath (Empetrum negru). The drawer on top contains marram grass because this vegetation is planted by men to counteract the erosion of the dunes. Because of the grass the wind is not able to move the sand.
The third column which is about the forest contains sand, bushes, pinecones and pine trees. The drawer with the most natural material is again sand: a bit of loamy, fine sand. The second drawer is filled with branches of shrubs, like the black cherry (Prunus serotina). Pines trees (Pinus nigra) are planted by men to counteract erosion of the island and therefore the drawer on top is filled with branches of this tree. The one below is filled with pinecones because they are produced by the tree itself.
The last column represents the polder and contains sand, grass, wool, and pumps and pipes. The first drawer contains a soil made of sand with a fertile mixed layer on top. The two drawers in the middle contain wool which refers to sheep (Ovis aries) and grass (Lolium perenne). The last drawer contains pumps and pipes which refer to the adjusted ground water height which is controlled by men. Cabinet of landscape
During Oerol, the whole cabinet is filled with test tubes who contain the essence of the best places on Terschelling. A few observations can be drawn by looking at the tubes. The first observation is that the essence of the place was not always the reason to put the tube in the cabinet. Many people placed the tube by matching the material captured in the tube with the material in the drawer instead matching the essence with the landscape. So maybe the material in the drawer was confusing for the visitor. Also remarkable is that many people put the essence of the beach in the drawer of the dunes. The final observation is that most essences are about an event or a memory and not about the landscape itself.
B. Boomstra, & P. lautenbach. (1998). Reisgids voor Terschelling. Assen: Drukkerij van Gorcum.
J. Zevenberg, & A. Zijlstra. (2012). LIFE Duinen, Verslag van zes jaar duinherstel in Nederland. Groningen: Staatsbosbeheer.
It will take a while before the area is completely changed to the landscape it was before. There is still much vegetation in the area which is not landscape specific and refer to the previous landscape, like reed and small pine trees. But in time this vegetation will change.
In the past years Staatsbosbeheer started to rethink the management of the islands and tried to use natural processes to maintain the shape of the island. One of the interventions is the removal of big parcels of forest and change it back into a dune landscape. By removing the trees nature is able to take over this area
