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Johanna Pirog
Media Art
Research Paper
Gort
Nature, Humans, and Documentation
There are many forms of art and media and many reasons why people choose
certain topics to focus and draw attention to. One that is particularly intriguing to me is
nature as the focus and documentation as the tool to express it. Especially since there are
many topics nature is connected with for example, politics, culture, and social aspects;
nature is a promising subject. It is ever changing with people and through evolution so it
is only normal to want to use it and document it. However, through documentation media
we are still very separate from the experience and truth of that which is being relayed to
us via document… nature. Separations between humans and nature is problematic and
fake and is a large part of how and why nature is document and displayed certain ways;
Doin and Wilson are important parts in expressing truth through their ideas and
knowledge about nature.
Separation between nature and humans comes in many forms of irony. For
instance, fences, T.V., parks, resorts, and zoos. This separation does not occur naturally
because humans are nature, humans are mammals, and humans have a place in the food
chain. And yet people go to extreme lengths to have separation and feel elevated above
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all other animals, and are not hesitant to take whatever whenever from “natural
resources”. Throughout this separation humans also do a lot of damage to the planet and
other animals and then try to fix it by creating reserves for wild animals and hold events
to save animals. In The Culture of Nature, one of Wilson’s main points is how humans
destroy, develop, and save and repeat this cycle over and over again.
Realities of nature are important to understand as well when seeing a document or
any art medium related to nature. Such things like “mother nature’s wrath”, evolution,
and extinction or species are all very much interwoven reactions with humans’ actions. In
Dion’s project Neukom Vivarium, he explains the project represents “Its ongoing decay
and renewal represent nature as a complex system of cycles and processes” which is on
display for people to see in a miniature form of how the larger scale of evolution operates
(Neukom Vivarium).
“I think that one of the important things about this work is that it’s really not an intensely
positive, back-to-nature kind of experience. In some ways, this project is an abomination.
We’re taking a tree that is an ecosystem—a dead tree, but a living system—and we are
re-contextualizing it and taking it to another site. We’re putting it in a sort of Sleeping
Beauty coffin, a greenhouse we’re building around it. And we’re pumping it up with a
life support system—an incredibly complex system of air, humidity, water, and soil
enhancement—to keep it going. All those things are substituting what nature does,
emphasizing how, once that’s gone, it’s incredibly difficult, expensive, and technological
to approximate that system—to take this tree and to build the next generation of forests
on it. So, this piece is in some way perverse. It shows that, despite all of our technology
and money, when we destroy a natural system, it’s virtually impossible to get it back. In a
sense, we’re building a failure” (Dion: 'Neukom Vivarium).
That is how Dion has decided to document and display nature and his concept. He
had used a raw form of nature an ongoing system, a simulation. Normally humans would
not be in contact this closely with nature and able to view it as its going through its cycle
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day to day, which is the opposite of being separated Dion has place a mini ecosystem
right in a building, this breaks the walls down the humans put up. He is showing the
negative impact people have on nature as well. He mentions how it is basically
impossible to replace or replicate nature once it is destroyed, nature is precious and
should not be used and destroyed so effortlessly.
Wilson tends to have a different approach but enforces the same principles Dion
discusses in his work. Wilson has documented his ideas of nature in The Culture of
Nature, he is more focused on how humans’ view of nature is “wrong” and being shaped
by culture, politics, and social aspects. Wilson addresses separation much more head on.
Wilson included a point made by Chief Standing Bear, an Ogalala Sioux who is
conflicted with the Europeans that colonized his land in the nineteenth century,
"We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with
tangled growth as 'wild.' Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the
land 'invested' with 'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful, and
we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the
east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it 'wild'
for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for
us the 'Wild West' began" (pg.224, Wilson, The Culture of Nature).
As Chief Standing Bear and Wilson point out only the white man thought of
nature as wilderness and elevated himself above the land and animals. This separation
began long ago and man is still trying to control nature to feel separation. Man created
landscapes an dams, man scared away animals with their presence, and man takes from
nature what is available. Man has tried to make nature a utopia, a fake perfect place
where nothing can go wrong when you experience it.
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But nature is not calm and ideal like it is depicted in our everyday experiences
such as walking down a street or watching a nature show. Mother Nature is very
unforgiving and humans try to portray that she is easily controlled. But occurrences such
as dams breaking, rock slides, avalanches, dry fires, tornados, tsunamis, and volcanoes
erupting can happen where people live and inhabit the world at any time. Anything
humans do to try and stop nature just fails in the end.
One of the main ways we experience nature is through our day to day lives
outdoors and through television. Animal Planet is big one observing animals in the
“wilderness” and showing people places they could not normally travel to with ease.
When people watch nature on T.V. it is through the comfort of their home through a
small flat screen far removed from what they are observing. People do not get sense of
climate, time, and animals in the nature shows they watch. Just like in a photograph,
Wilson compares a camera to being a tool to go hunting with, in other words to shoot and
capture a picture or a “scene” in nature. A photograph has edges and stops, one cannot
see beyond the frame, it is safe, and it feels safe because it is removed for its context. The
camera and video camera just separate people from nature further.
Boarders are another failed attempt to separate humans from nature in our day to
day lives. If a bear wants to go through a person’s trash it will make its way through a
neighborhood and break a fence to do so. Birds will fly freely wherever they choose.
Humans are encroaching on animal territory just as much as they are to us land is
something that should be shared between all species not taken over by one.
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No matter what humans do we cannot separate ourselves from nature and any
separation that occurs is only temporary like in social aspects (neighborhoods), political
issues (resources), and cultures (bigger picture) humans will always effect nature.
Humans play an enormous role in what happens and why things happen in nature,
whether it is because we take resources or continuously build and expand our
civilizations we are altering nature and creating a negative impact. Wilson and Dion open
our eyes to how nature functions, what is wrong with human and nature interactions, and
that we should not take it for granted through their forms of documentation.
However much humans are the problem they are also the solution. No matter how
much destruction people do to nature and the environment they can stop it and start fixing
it. Humans do create nature perseveres and make an effort to save endangered species.
People also try to stop the bulldozing of forests and habitats that nature clings to. There
just needs to be a much bigger effort from humanity to save what is left of nature and to
not damage it any further. Dion and Wilson have both made important points about the
fragility of nature and what is wrong with how humans interact with it through their
medium which was documentation and simulation, their work has had an impact on my
view of just how excessive the separations between people and nature are.
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Bibliography
Julie Bacon (& Editor), Anne Bean, Paul Clarke, Pat Cooke, Chris Dorsett, John
Gray, Matthew Hearn, Stuart Howard, Justin McKeown, Kerstin Mey, Sarah
Pierce, Julian Warren, Angela Weight, Victoria Worsley. "Mark Dion
Taxonomies / Memories & Identities." Arkive City - Taxonomies. Newcastle,
England, and Belfast, Northern Ireland: Interface and Locus+ Archive, 2008,
n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. <http://www.interface.ulster.ac.uk/arkivecity/
mark_dion.html>.
"Mark Dion: 'Neukom Vivarium'" Art 21. Art21, Inc. 2001–2012, n.d. Web. 26 Nov.
2013. <http://www.art21.org/texts/mark-dion/
interview-mark-dion-neukom-vivarium>.
Wilson, Alexander. “The Culture of Nature, North American Landscape from Disney to
the Exxon Valdez”. Toronto, Canada: Between The Lines, 1991. Print.
"Neukom Vivarium." Seattle Art Museum: Permanent Collection. Seattle Art Museum,
n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. <http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/emuseum/code/
emuseum.asp?style=browse¤trecord=1&page=search&profile=objects&searchdesc=N
eukom%20Vivarium&quicksearch=Neukom%20Vivarium&newvalues=1&newstyle=
single&newcurrentrecord=1>.