objects-proto/etudes.html

Etudes for Learning from the Environment

2005.10.08

This is a collection of exercises that I think can be used to see the environment differently, to extract different types of information from your surroundings, and learn how to connect to the environment as a continual source of information. These skills seem necessary to make the types of choices to regulate our behavior based on new forms of ecological information. In our human past, the ecological information was mainly from the natural world and small groups of people. We evolved sensitivities to connect to that information landscape over a long time. Now our information is mainly from the built environment and includes a much broader scale of human social interactions (including well developed economies). Additionally, it seems to me that we don't have hundreds of generations to learn how to deal with our new environment through genetic selection. We need to learn to see the salient features of our environment in our every day life and regulate our behavior accordingly. One of the real challenges in learning to perceive the environment is to change our perception from minutes to years to decades. I have developed several etudes that specifically address long time scales.

List of Etudes - with short description

Time awareness

1. Visit a favorite place (Aldo Leopold)

• A place from your childhood is especially meaningful.
• Visit this location one or two times per month over three years.
• Visit the place in different seasons.

2. Visit where you grew up

• Find your house.
• Walk from you home to school.
• Look at photos from the "old days".
• Talk to your parents and family friends about how the neighborhood has changed over 20 to 70 years.

3. Grow a vegetable garden.

• Plan your garden to provide some food for each week of the summer.
• Pay attention to the planting and harvest season.

Learning about a particular location

4. Immersion for a day (Thoreau)

• Stay put for a full sunrise to sunset cycle (or more).
• You don't have to be underwater, but you have to be in the environment (not in your car or a building).

5. Listen to all the sounds at dawn or dusk.(Coehlo)

• Sit very still and listen to all the activities.
• Listen for the changes from evening to dusk and from dusk to dark (or the reverse in the morning).

6. Map drill down (maps.google.com or MetroMap)

• Study maps and aerial photographs of an area.
• Start with a large scale and zoom in on particular areas.
• Look at multiple map representations including topographic, city zoning, and aerial photographs.

7. Walk a transect from a few miles away to a location that you know well. (ESR102)

• You could walk a transect to one of your favorite spots or your home.
• Observe the changes in the environment as you get near your spot.
• Are their gradients in any parameters that would indicate you are going toward your spot. For example, if you are going toward a park are their more trees, birds or kids as you get close? Is it warmer or cooler?

8.Walk at 1/2 speed. (Coelho)

• Walk a familiar path or route deliberately at 1/2 speed.

9. Take your dog, horse or a little child for a walk.

• Other animals and small children interact with the environment in a totally different way that adult humans.
• Walking with a terrier will be very different than walking with a labrador. Dogs live in a world that has a historical trace of smell.
• If you have a horse, ride in an unfamiliar area (unfamiliar to the horse) and let the horse check out all the little details.
• Children don't walk in a straight line. Pay attention to what they pay attention to.

Searching

10. Search for a particular business in an unfamiliar area of a city.

• Find a type of store with no maps and without asking anyone.
• It is usually easier to find coffee shops or bakeries.
• It is more challenging to find a bookstore or
• You have to search to find it, not just wander around.

11. Search for another person that is also trying to find you.

• This etude requires another person that does this as a surprise. You and your "prey" don't get to
• Some neutral party "releases" two people in a region of the city with the only instructions are to find a specific person whom you know.
• You are supposed to devise a specific strategy to find or be found.

Measurements

12. Create a Stommel diagram for a region

• Identify the time and space scales for objects and processes.
• Describe the texture.
• Determine if the scale indicates lumpiness or scale-independency (fractal nature).

• Characterize the energy intensity and stress zones surrounding some human process.

14. Disturbance (Woody et al.)

• Estimate the historical and spatial pattern of disturbance for a particular area.
• For example, if you see a gap in the canopy you can estimate the age of the new trees and the age of the trees in a circle around the center of that gap.
• Be careful for stump holes!

Health, Beauty and Life

15. Sketch the landscape and buildings (Christopher Alexander)

• Sketch a human/natural scene.
• Look for connectedness and asymmetries that indicate "living" patterns.

References

Alexander, Christopher. - multiple references

Coelho, Paulo 1992. The pilgrimage. English Edition.

dissipation zones - http://web.pdx.edu/~rueterj/courses/objects/dissipation-zones.html

ESR101 lab write ups - http://web.pdx.edu/~rueterj/courses/esr101-200403/labs/esr101lab5.html

http://maps.google.com

Leopold, Aldo. 1947. A Sand County Almanac.

MetroMap for Portland Metropolitan area

Thoreau, Henry David 1854. Walden

Woody et al. Lab report from Woody, Sachina and ***?