Transforming Landscape

The landscape in Transition 1

Our traffic habits have changed radically in the last twenty years . All have become more mobile . It is not unusual to drive 75 km each way every day to get to work. With an average of approximately 60 km t we move through the landscape . It is experienced through your windshield . AirCon'en is turned on. There are installed pollen filter . Perfume can be added blowing air if reek of manure spread becomes too crass . A faint hum from your car's tires are the only sound stage outside. So there is a huge gap between homo automobilis and the landscape out there. It boils down to a film on your windshield . All other sensory influences one at a lesser rate is subjected when , for example, bike or walk , is gone. The wildlife keeps his distance from the roads with their noise and light. The only animals you see are the ones that are run over , reduced to tartare with fur .
We can do complain about. Why we no longer have time to stroll through nature and the countryside and experience the great diversity ? But there is nothing to do. The landscape has already been adjusted to højindustriel production on the one hand , and adapted an experience speed of 60 km h in the other.
Therefore, we need to grab the gap between the old , yet acting, landscape view , and the situation as they look out there. Bybevidstheden has set itself through in our view of the countryside. It is hard to imagine a landscape holding only for its own sake . As not to be undertaken by paths and physical tools or stands with information on everything the expectant consumer can expect from ingesting this particular landscape product. But it is worth trying to find a new image , which can be as inclusive and dynamic as the old .


The landscape in Transition 2

Landscape : only word shows what we normally associate with it. It is undeveloped , or at least sparsely populated country around the villages , which contains both the topographical landscape , the productive landscape and even marine waters that surround the country. Initially, it is surely an aesthetic category. When you talk about landscape , is often attributed prospect . So the way the country topographic unfolds on before our eyes . And the way these topographic folds grabs in our own memory , and in the collective memory as seen unfolded in pictures, literature and other awareness generation.
It can therefore not only the landscape . You see just as much into his own mental landscape . The mirroring between these two " prospects " provides a platform for both ideology and common personal preferences .
The landscape is not a neutral setting for our life. A primeval landscape that we are put in , and affording the resistance is to increase awareness of the public and of the individual.
The landscape is a dynamic on- and team-mate . A room which, with its spatial characteristics such as . rain, wind , soil, vegetation , etc. affect the actions and thoughts . In its turn influenced the landscape back of these thoughts and actions. In recent decades, even to an extent which has almost naturkatastrofisk scale .


The landscape in Transition 3

With the industrial technologies, " conversation " between landscape and consciousness become more of a monologue . Old Karl Marx spoke of the driving force of history blah . all about man's dominion over nature . In 1840 , it has certainly been an almost utopian idea that man should be able to dominate and unilaterally shape the nature around it. But here 170 years after it's almost become common reality. Mechanical and chemical supremacy now characterize our relationship to the landscape. The old dictum about man's mastery of nature have been met. At least as long as we talk about the productive landscape , and does not include the setbacks nature produces in the form of extreme weather, natural disasters, etc.
And yet the image that still characterizes the landscape perception , the image which was founded in 1840 - 1880s , when Denmark experienced a mass exodus from rural to urban areas , and where much of the landscape had not yet been involved for production but was in sleep as unused and often unusable breaks in the landscape. The landscape was changed during the period , more land was put into farmland. Wet and dry areas that were previously unusable , was with new technologies grow straight. So there was a connection between the facts as they unfolded out there and the ideology that was cross sum of efforts .
It is the vaunted Golden Age in Denmark , the period in which " the stork sitting on the roof of the farm " and where exactly peasant country was the subject of a massive propaganda , not least from the artists , as in the landscape and the people who have at the time lived a life in landscape terms, as a native population and an unsullied life . Golden Age The images often contain parts originally Rights myth (According to the landscape and life in it is closer to the human origins than the city is its alienation and cultural level. ) And eulogy to the growing mastery of nature for the benefit of society. Typically, it is not the desolate landscape , most often described . It is a landscape populated by industrious people , or a desolate landscape , which is at least clear evidence of being grown .


The landscape in Transition 4

We are perhaps in an equally radical situation in those years. There is again a large exodus from the countryside to the cities. The technology enables the food - which , after all, still the primary objective of betvingelsen of the landscape - can be handled by so few people that the social life of the country is in danger of extinction. It's hard to keep a football club , if you can not put up with 11 men .
And here capsizes relationship between the actual , present conditions in the country, and the ideology and self-understanding, which still exists in the minds of all of us : that " there was so nice out in the country " , with goose tethered by the roadside , the goat on the roof of the chicken house and a large crowd .
If not this old-fashioned view of the country and the landscape had harmful effects on groundwater , wildlife and stuff because it is mned to prevent innovation , we could be indifferent , and walk around and lull us into that all is well . However, when planning the development of the landscape does not have the same scale as the exploitation of its resources , you end up in the impoverishment of the landscape in terms of the spatial qualities , generically and ultimately the impoverishment of the countryside for the people who still live there. Why do we find for example in the countryside in the killing of windbreaks along fields to a degree , so houses and farms end up lying and small, windswept legos at some huge unmarked surfaces ?


The landscape in Transition 5

We will have to look at the scenery with the same scale as the use of landscape use . It is not enough to conserve this or Hine rivers or valleys . We will have to see the countryside on a large scale as a very dense web of meanings and mutual influences. Where both the production , the recreation and the " transport " landscape merged. In Denmark we have virtually no places that are pure nature. Most places have at one time or another been grown , addressed adjusted , harvested or subjected to other human activities. Therefore, we must look at the landscape as a major cultural image. And we must think carefully about which landscape image we want , that can accommodate production , recreation and sustainability.

September 2012