Background:

In the discussion of biophilia and topophilia, one of the threads running through in the background was that some forms of life or landscapes are beautiful and should be protected because of this quality. You may be skeptical over whether we can define what is "beautiful". Many people have tried to define and even quanitfy what might be considered beautiful or the ethics of how we should treat beautiful objects.

You should suspend your disbelief for a bit in this course and consider my claim that sustainable patterns in natural or human/nature environments are beautiful. To get an idea of what I am claiming, please see this list of quotes that compares what people have said about "beauty", "health" and "life" or living forms. quotes. I have elaborated this claim on this page about sustainable patterns. I believe that there are landscapes, ecoscapes, animals, or plants that you would consider very valuable because, in part, you consider them to be beautiful. And I also believe that there are some aspects of the urban environment that you consider ugly partly because these features are unhealthy.

Assignment:

Walk around aimlessly for days or home in on someplace that you think will be beautiful or ugly. Continue until you find an ugly place and a beautiful place. You don't have to find the most beautiful or the ugliest, nor do you have to compare these two against each other.

For each place, capture your impressions with:

a. written description that includes where it is exactly

b. why you think it is beautiful or ugly

c. how valuable you think it is or how much you want to see it gone (value on it's absence)

d. a drawing of how you see it

e. any other impressions you wish to include such as a picture, poem, free write, video of an interpretive dance, song

f. any reflections on your interaction with this place - but in particular address "Did your artistic interaction with a beautiful place do it justice, and did your interaction with an ugly place make it more "beautiful"?