New Landscapes
The modern landscape must inevitably find its definition within a canon, just as landscape painting over the centuries has created a visual and interpretive canon. In addition to establishing rules, the canon conveys a range of emotions, regulating our reactions to some extent. But what does the modern and technical landscape convey?
Images do not necessarily have to be beautiful in the traditional sense. Beauty is not exalted as such, but through the highlighting of something ugly, which evokes discomfort. This is because, in a sense, we are changing landscapes, making them uglier with industrial intervention. Conversely, we strive to beautify them according to principles of functionality (a characteristic of the technological).
Educating the eye to ugliness? Transforming ugliness into beauty? It is both a semantic and sensory operation, perhaps with a technological stamp. Take, for example, modern architecture and industrial cities: skyscrapers, infrastructure, factories, which are designed to be functional but are sometimes also aesthetically pleasing according to new criteria. Here, beauty is no longer tied to nature but to rationality and efficiency. In some ways, we try to appreciate functional form as beauty. However, the chemistry of beauty is not the same as that of ugliness; trying to confuse the two concepts will not solve the central issue: the progressive uninhabitability we are imposing on our environment.
The still image of a painting, whether real or imagined, has helped mythologize the landscape and places. The very concept of beauty has been fixed in a configuration of concepts and experiences. Today, this concept needs to be updated in light of what technological culture is producing. As a result, beauty is slowly merging with the functional in an inexorable process.
Images do not necessarily have to be beautiful in the traditional sense. Beauty is not exalted as such, but through the highlighting of something ugly, which evokes discomfort. This is because, in a sense, we are changing landscapes, making them uglier with industrial intervention. Conversely, we strive to beautify them according to principles of functionality (a characteristic of the technological).
Educating the eye to ugliness? Transforming ugliness into beauty? It is both a semantic and sensory operation, perhaps with a technological stamp. Take, for example, modern architecture and industrial cities: skyscrapers, infrastructure, factories, which are designed to be functional but are sometimes also aesthetically pleasing according to new criteria. Here, beauty is no longer tied to nature but to rationality and efficiency. In some ways, we try to appreciate functional form as beauty. However, the chemistry of beauty is not the same as that of ugliness; trying to confuse the two concepts will not solve the central issue: the progressive uninhabitability we are imposing on our environment.
The still image of a painting, whether real or imagined, has helped mythologize the landscape and places. The very concept of beauty has been fixed in a configuration of concepts and experiences. Today, this concept needs to be updated in light of what technological culture is producing. As a result, beauty is slowly merging with the functional in an inexorable process.
