Methodologies: How to Read a Landscape

by Max Liborion, 06/17/2013

When people see certain objects and landscapes, they understand them through their own eyes. I was curious about the title ‘how to read a landscape’ because I did not think we could read a landscape, but we could see. The author mentions that reading landscapes can be a valuable methodology for us in this book.

How to read a landscape: “the goal of this particular page is certainly not to provide a comprehensive or systematic guide for those seeking to learn the craft of reading landscapes for the rich natural, cultural, and historical information they contain. Rather, this page is offered as an invitation to begin exploring this endlessly fascinating subject on your own.” You can understand the overall understanding of this article by reading the book. We will have time to contemplate on our own the fascinating subject of how to read a landscape.

I agree with the author’s perspective; you will want to bring a limited set of tools that will allow you to learn and record some landscape components but leave behind anything that will inhibit or encumber your experience. 

I like to travel, and I’ve been to 15 countries. I love to learn about new cultures and experiences when traveling to new countries and cities. I saw some travelers are busy recording their trips. Those records sometimes feel like a treasure trove of things, such as a piece of evidence that can be retrieved because we could forget it later. However, we should consider that the camera is sometimes a hindrance if I want to experience and further experience that culture and landscape at that time. Suppose the focus is on taking pictures and not being good at other experiences. In that case, it also seems to take away the joy of travel and projections that inhibit experiencing the landscape. That is okay to take a photo every time you want to see the beautiful scenery with your eyes, but if you want to learn about a landscape, take a journal and pencil. Orienting yourself to the landscape by walking and looking is sometimes more important to learn about landscapes. In addition, visit your landscape throughout the year. If you understand the landscape where you want to learn, you are encouraged to visit each season. Note the species of plants or animals you see at particular times of the year. The changing weather may affect other aspects of the landscape, such as the physical location of structures or the methods of human transportation.

Moreover, it is important to change our perfective and learning landscape by reading documents such as land survey records, old photos, aerial photos, and census records. These documents can tell you how the landscape has been transformed over time. I want to share the questions from the article.

• Why did settlers choose this location?
• Does it have close access to transportation?
• Is it near an urban environment?
• What sorts of occupations did the settlers hold?
• Is the land conducive for agriculture, or are there resources in the area that can be extracted for profit?

In addition, you could learn about your landscape by considering the relation between monuments and the politics of memory. In this book, particularly historical narratives conveyed by monuments also raise questions about the politics of memory. It is always worth asking about memories that may have been forgotten and how the return of those erased memories can change how we think about modern landscapes. For example, I was born and sent my childhood to the southern part of Korea, named.’

Gwangju. There was historical issues’ Gwangju Democratization Movement. If you know more about the history of ‘Gwangju,’ you could learn more about landscapes. Because of the severe democratization movement, Gwangju has changed its landscape significantly.

Lastly, this article was a very interesting topic, and it was not difficult, so it was a new challenge to read the landscape while reading it comfortably. Even though I lived in Ames, I never thought to understand and write about this neighborhood’s landscape, but I want to try it once by reading this article.

Here is my project to read a landscape of Iowa State University campus. We made four different teams and have a different directions. My team walk through the north part of ISU campus and try to memo what I see. After back to the classroom, I tried to draw the map with my memory.

Reference

Methodologies: how to read a landscape, 06/17/2013, Nax Kubiruib, https://discardstudies.com/2013/06/17/methodologies-how-to-read-a-landscape/