Place and the mind body duality

I was recently looking through the website of Yi-Fu Tuan, a humanist geographer I have long admired and one often described, in academic circles certainly, as a leading authority on place.  I was drawn to a particular posting on his site, a transcript of his farewell lecture delivered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about a year ago.

In this talk he expounds on an idea that I think is seminal to his thinking and which moreover has significant implications for my own ideas on place: the inherent duality of human mind (consciousness) and body (physical presence).  Tuan’s basic premise is that as humans our minds often operate independently of our physical selves; that is, we can easily be “somewhere else” though physically situated in a specific location.  The wandering mind.  It happens all of the time.

For Tuan, mind and body are reasonably manifestations of the broader concepts of space and place: “…since the human individual is both body and mind, he can also be said to be both ‘place’ and ‘space.’  His body, tied by his senses to the environment, is place; his mind, freed from such sensory ties, is space.” [Tuan, Yi-Fu. “Space, Place, and Nature: The Farewell Lecture.” April 4, 2014.  http://www.yifutuan.org/dear_colleague.htm ]

I find that idea worth further consideration for several reasons.  Firstly, I admire it for its inherent simplicity.  In its economy of words it encapsulates a particularly insightful and far-reaching truth.

I also find it interesting in that it essentially turns my terms on their head.  For in my discourse, place is dependent on human consciousness.  It always sources to some extent on the inherent identity and character of a physical location, but it is given life and full realisation within the mind of the observer. It is the end state in my view, whereas Tuan’s use implies it is a constituent component.

Likewise, though I haven’t substantially worked through this yet, I would be more inclined to associate the term space with a physical location and more than that, one which contributes to but doesn’t necessarily result in a sense of place.  To Tuan, our bodies in a particular location, bound to and subject to the limitations of physical presence, provide us our place.  While our minds, equipped with imagination and freed from such constraints, provide us with the boundless experience of space.

Another way to consider this is through the use of my basic definition: place = location + meaning. Here, location is the placeholder for all that is physically experienced, as well as that which is inherent to the identity of a particular landscape. It is therefore the realm of the physical senses. It exists as a critical component of place, as the equation suggests, but one that requires the addition of the observer and consciousness.

Based on that and seemingly in opposition to Tuan’s definitions, I would be inclined then to associate the term space with physical location and subject in some instances therefore to what he calls “sensory ties.” I’m not as comfortable suggesting the association of constraints or limitations with this physical component, but I understand his purpose in doing so, to support his contention of the corresponding limitlessness of consciousness.

A space in my view becomes the material context, a container if you will, into or onto which meaning is established, resulting in deeply felt connections. This space can be used to define the boundaries of a natural landscape, a cultural landscape or that of a more immediate scale representation such as a room. The latter suggests some interesting ideas about place within the context of architecture, something I’d like to take up in a future post.

So on the surface a reversal of terms, but ultimately not a contradiction of terms.  Like Tuan I am steering towards the same end state – a celebration of the experience of place and an acknowledgement of just how enriching those moments are to the human condition, and thus how important that perspective is to any treatment of geography.

What’s more, upon further reflection I think Yi-Fu Tuan’s ideas in this instance provide me with a legitimate way to begin to address what has been something of a nagging challenge of uncertainty. His notion of the mind body duality, though seemingly employing different definitions of place and space than my own, might offer a means of a more nuanced understanding of in situ and displaced place.

Place, in what I suppose is its most elemental form, can certainly be conjured while one is situated within a particular location.  Most I think would be comfortable accepting the idea that a sense of place can be felt while one is right there, experiencing all that a given location has to offer the mind and the senses.

But I’ve found too that a significant sense of place can arise when simply experiencing various media manifestations (photographs, soundscapes, paintings, video) for instance, that effectively capture and re-present a location.  That displaced sense of place might be similar and comparable to that experienced in situ, or it might represent a whole new level of awareness, perhaps influenced by the nature of the media employed.

I think this notion of removed place is interesting and worth celebrating, but the fact that it happens is not the challenge for me.  Rather, I’m struggling to put the two styles of place sense in their proper relational context.  I can’t decide for instance if in situ place, which just feels that way, is necessarily more genuine.  Or if the place sense from the exhibition of a removed location can even legitimately be compared on a meaningful level.

Thus far I’ve been happy to recognise that both these types of place sense exist and in fact in their differences only expand and enrich the potential of place generally.  But I still desire a more satisfying way to characterise them, particularly in regards to one another.  Arising from different experiential sources, why do they each emerge and how might they be properly contextualised to give them their separate and combined due?

Here is where the writing of the venerable professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison can be of assistance. Borrowing from Tuan, two agents (body and mind), in two contexts (in situ and displaced), generates four possible outcomes:

1. body and mind both in the location
2. body in the location, mind displaced
3. mind in the location, body displaced
4. mind and body both displaced.

A body in a physical location is easy enough to understand.  But the idea of a mind in a location requires a bit more explanation.  For the purposes of this discussion I would describe a mind in a location as one fully engaged with that location.

If the observer is in situ, then inputs like those from the physical senses certainly help to focus the mind in this way; if displaced, then things like memory or media representations can help engage consciousness.  The point is that the mind in this instance is fully there. It is flooded with a high level of awareness and as such knows little in the way of distraction.

So now to look at each of the four scenarios and how they relate to in situ and displaced sense of place.

Number four is easily discounted to start.  For if the observer is not in a location and the conscious mind has no engagement with that location, then no sense of place is possible. Or if it is argued that there could be an unconscious connection, there is still no observer awareness and so no sense of place. This might be characterised as the rest of the world, outside of each of us. It exists, we understand rationally that it exists, but at this point in time we have no legitimate connection to it.

Scenario two suggests Yi-Fu Tuan’s take on space and place.  For it is this common distinction between physical presence and consciousness found in humans that defines the mind body duality for him.  Interestingly (and by my interpretation of his writing anyway) he sees this as ripe with potential.  For it is our uniquely imaginative minds that free us from the bounds of physical locations and allow us to experience a more enlightened idea of space.

Again I absolutely understand and accept his thoughts on this, but acknowledge that it represents a different use of terminology and therefore gives rise to a somewhat different set of conclusions on place than my own.  By my reckoning, this arrangement cannot result in a fully realised sense of place and is therefore not the most enlightened outcome. It does however stand as a powerful scenario for understanding the role of inherent locational identity, a critical input for sense of place.

Scenario number three corresponds to my definition of displaced place.  It is here that various proxies for a meaningful experience or awareness stimulate the connections that are required for a true sense of place.  And as I’ve noted previously, the resultant place sense can be surprisingly visceral. And it can conjure a wholly new and different level of consciousness to that resulting from in situ experience (scenarios one and two).

That leaves scenario one.  And it is here I think that the idea of sense of place is most comfortably acceptable, nearly logical in fact.  If we are physically situated in a location, directly experiencing all that location has to offer in its visual aesthetics, sounds, smells, tactile sensations, and simultaneously our conscious minds are fully engaged, whether from those sensory inputs, other mental triggers like memories, or as is often the case a combination of both, then a genuine and deeply felt sense of place is, if not inevitable, at least possible.  And it is likely to be powerfully felt.

So Tuan’s ideas on mind body duality offer a worthwhile means of analysing in situ and displaced place, and that’s very useful to me.  The question remains, though, am I any closer as a result to clarifying their respective roles and significance?

I suppose that remains to be seen. It does demonstrate, however, that the two states of place sense, on the surface wholly disparate, can be considered together within the same analytical framework. And that feels to me like a step along the path.

 

Kumutoto stream re-dedication: the sound of place

I was privileged to be invited to the recent re-dedication of the Kumutoto Stream soundscape installation, as it officially transitioned from a temporary exhibit to a permanent art installation for Wellington.  The artist behind this unique-to-the-city work, Kedron Parker, graciously extended that invitation as way of acknowledging the alignment between her desire to uncover linkages to the city’s historic geography and my interest in place.

The event was well and enthusiastically attended with a noteworthy mix of participants from Māori mana whenua, city officials, artists and journalists and I’m sure a contingent of lunchtime passers-by, curious no doubt about this impromptu gathering at the top of Woodward Street.

All were supportive of the idea of this new style of public art for the city, a departure from the standard sculpture or mounted plaque, and the significance of Kedron’s contribution as a harbinger of things to come was duly noted.  A key topic of discussion concerned proposed work to follow on from the original tunnel enhancements, which would extend to broader and increasingly relevant considerations of the local water cycle.

Since my last visit to this location, a waterscape feature (titled The Wet Index) has been installed behind glass in one of the historic buildings bordering Woodward Street, fueled by water collected from the Kumutoto headwaters.  It provides the public a chance to see Kumutoto stream water in movement as they listen to its sounds emanating from the nearby pedestrian tunnel.

Representing one of the talks from members of the various groups in attendance, a representative from the Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust spoke passionately about the significance of local streams like the Kumutoto to local iwi. She bemoaned what she described as the loss of this and other local waterways classified by the city as drainages, rather than streams, within the urban context.

Relegated to pipes beneath the pavement and buildings of the city, and serving purely utilitarian roles as conduits within an infrastructure stormwater system, they had suffered no less than a death in her estimation. For their invisibility within the built environment meant too a loss of direct engagement with their natural movement, the source of their lifeforce.

Listening to her speak on this topic put me in mind of similar ideas expressed by native peoples in North America. In the American desert southwest where I lived for a time, indigenous tribes also recognise the significance of natural movement, expressed most often within that arid environment in terms of wind. Moving wind as a source of life is acknowledged not only in terms of that which flows across the natural landscape but in all of its manifestations, including the breath of words and song.

It also highlighted for me the importance of this idea of movement amongst physicists, a group to which I previously belonged and representing surely one of the most adamantly indoctrinated to the principles of western/pākehā scientific thought. Classified as kinetic energy in this context, the power of movement is accorded a significant role within the precepts of fundamental physics.

In this light, Kedron’s work is more than just another piece of public art. It is in fact an important attempt to reconnect the Wellington public with this particular lifeforce, expressed through temporally distant but familiar sounds associated with the movement of Kumutoto Stream in its natural state. In doing so it is gifting to all who experience it the possibility at least of benefitting from it, as those who resided in or visited this area prior to the development of the Port Nicholson settlement once had.

This particular form of artistic expression, a soundscape, offering as it does a connection to a long absent lifeforce, provides as well yet another avenue to a meaningful sense of place. The rush of water and ancillary sounds of a riparian zone projected through the installation’s speakers effectively captures the place of Kumutoto Stream at this location. Standing within the confines of the pedestrian tunnel, putting aside any visual inputs for a moment, it is that auditory experience that generates meaning. And it is more than anything an emotional reaction.

In my discussions of place I’ve focused primarily on visual inputs, including in particular photography as a trigger for sense of place removed. But perhaps I’ve done so at the expense of those inputs from other senses. I have generally associated sensory triggers like sound and smell and touch with in situ place, as it is in these immediate contexts that they are most prevalent and potent. But the experience of this soundscape has opened up new possibilities for me in this regard. And more than that it has seemingly presented a powerful and highly accessible way to emotionally connect with place.

When I was an undergraduate student at university some twenty years ago, I enrolled in a basic music class as a way to satisfy required non-major elective credits for my degree. The word on the street was that the class was a particularly easy option with a good grade all but assured. The professor teaching that particular class was of an age and an inclination to have been actively involved in the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and was still considered something of an ex-hippy.

But he most definitely knew his subject and his relaxed teaching style resulted in an unexpected level of learning for all of us who had enrolled in that class. It was not uncommon for the lecture to veer off on tangents, once we learned he was easily distracted and prone to tell stories from his past. On one such occasion, we wound up talking about the idea of choosing what sense we would give up if required to do so. After a time it settled into a discussion of sight versus hearing. As expected almost all of those in the class were emphatic that they would never want to do without sight, so could sacrifice their hearing.

The professor was just as passionate in his opposing response – he would sacrifice sight over hearing without hesitation if required. Sight he argued provided plenty of information, it was true, and we had evolved to become very dependent upon it. But sound, he explained, gave life its emotion, its nuanced meaning. Without it life could be empty, a series of flat images, and that he couldn’t bear.

As I suspect was the case with most in the class, I wasn’t fully swayed at the time. But my experience in the intervening twenty-odd years has helped convince me otherwise. I more fully appreciate now the wisdom in that professor’s words.

At the re-dedication ceremony I was struck again by that truth. For it is the auditory experience, the sound of rushing water and birdsong that best captures and meaningfully re-presents a buried lifeforce of movement, of place as it once was here. And it has managed to do this for me, and for others, though we might have no direct personal connection with this particular location.

All of this serves to raise in my mind again this idea of in situ sense of place versus that associated with unknown or otherwise removed locations. For despite a natural and logical partiality towards the superiority of in situ place experience, those biases have again been effectively challenged.

It is hard afterall to deny that in the presence of those gentle sounds emanating from within the Kumutoto pedestrian tunnel, the stream that once ran here in a meaningful way is raised up and out of its buried pipes and into our direct consciousness of place.

Place through the lens

In a previous post I extolled the virtues of the highly personal, in situ engagement with a location as critical to a genuine experience of place.  In light of that, what follows may very well read as a contradiction.  Maybe it is.  Maybe it’s a new perspective that reflects a fundamental shift in my thinking.  Considering the challenges involved with capturing the ethereal nature of place, that would not be completely unexpected.

For the same reason though, contradiction seems an overly simplistic assessment.  It feels more like evolution.  And as things evolve and while in the process of settling, they may appear for a time to contradict themselves.  Suggesting then that locations must be directly experienced to generate the most visceral sense of place is not necessarily at odds with the notion that sense of place arising from the visual portrayal of a location in a photograph is likewise sincere and powerful.

The latter idea certainly bears further investigation.  A significant driver behind this blog afterall is a consideration of the potential role of photography within the broader idea of place.

For me photographs have long been an important and particularly potent conjurer of place.  They are in fact often a singularly critical catalyst supporting the emergence of a sense of place for locations from which I am physically removed.  These might be places never visited, or more often, places to which I had traveled some time in the past.  The images in these cases often supersede my own memories as a source of a strong place sense.

Therein lies a peculiar power of photography – the ability to stimulate a displaced sense of place.

More than that, photographs can add a whole new dimension to the experience of place, expanding its potential and opening it to novel applications where it might not otherwise have even been considered.

And it’s surprising to me how strong, on occasion, that photography-induced sense of place can be.  I suppose it’s not fair to directly compare it to an in situ experience, as it is something altogether different, but it can be compelling nonetheless.  My reaction to a photograph in this regard can be quite intuitional and highly emotional, striking something deep within that links me to the portrayed location.

This is all triggered of course by vision, and as such I think anyone would struggle to properly convey the result in words.  With photography it is the images themselves that determine levels of response and I think it best therefore for the purposes of any place discussion focused on imagery to keep words to a minimum.

What follows then in this blog and others to come, is a selection of my photographs that for me properly evoke the sense of place I experienced while in various locations.  As such they provide me a new level of meaning beyond that which I experienced while there, and perhaps just as importantly help shore up my memory against the erosional effects of time, allowing me to retain and keep that place sense long after I’ve left the location behind.

What’s even more amazing to me is that in some cases the photographs create in me a whole new sense of place.  This emerges I believe from a consideration of the location through a specific perspective – maybe with a particular focus on lighting or shadow or pattern, or the removal of ambient sounds and tactile experience and all of the other things that influence in situ sense of place.

So far from undermining the emotional engagement with locations experienced while situated within them, the captured image can in fact add new emotional contexts, all generated from vision alone.  The record of the eye, presented through the avenue of a camera lens and in its isolation, opens new doors into the space.

Displaced place via photography and in situ place are hardly mutually exclusive.  They are in fact complementary.  Taken together they have the potential to instill an even deeper, richer sense of place, striking at many more emotional chords than is possible with either individually.

Here then a few images of mine, taken on New Zealand’s Otago Peninsula, to illustrate the point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place from within place

Suggesting that the meaning fueling place can emerge from a host of sources, including those not directly related to the location or to the observer in that location, widens things to an extent that any sort of rational description seems implausible.

But I suspect there may be a way through, a path towards a viable consideration of place and all it encapsulates. It comes from a deeper consideration of that idea that the meaning attributed to a location is ultimately personal, even if it can also source from something externally generated.

This then raises some interesting questions.  Would these two types of meaning conjure different senses of place for the same location? And is the sense of place that results from directly personal meaning inherently more powerful?

It’s worth taking a moment firstly to acknowledge that externally generated influences can legitimately contribute to sense of place. In fact in my experience it is not uncommon. And more specifically, place-defining meaning I’ve found can arise in the absence of any personal experience with a given location. Again, this has been the case for me more than once.

I’ve seen locations depicted in the news, online, as part of a television program for instance, that distinctly conveyed a sense of that place for me, established a meaningful connection on some level, with the landscape portrayed. This despite having never been there or even knowing anything really about that location other than what the media outlet was, at that moment, offering up to me.

But it’s been just as clear to me that knowledge alone doesn’t typically generate the necessary level of meaning, of connection.  For all of the senses of place I’ve experienced via external media inputs for instance, there were many more locations I’ve seen portrayed in that manner, even when wrapped in a rich accompaniment of engaging information, that remained nothing more than, well, locations. Thanks to the media outlet I may have possessed a wealth of knowledge about that physical location, and that may have satisfied a part of my rational mind, but it did not conjure a sense of place.

So there is something triggering a sense of place for me for some externally presented landscapes, but not others. Beyond attributing that to some subconscious connection, which in fact arguably makes these senses of place internally and personally sourced rather than truly external, I’ve remained at a loss to explain them.

But it is here that I gained some insight. For in considering them more closely and honestly, I understood that these externally sourced senses of place, even if they had some sort of connection to something personally significant to me, still did not really measure up to those I experienced when present in the location itself. In other words, even the most tangible sense of place arising from an external depiction of a location could not quite equal the visceral sense of place that possessed me at times when standing within a physical landscape.

I don’t know that I’m prepared to lay it down as a requirement, as some sort of rule, but based on my experience I can’t deny that the most genuine sense of place apparently demands in situ connection to express itself fully and to its greatest potential.

Place it would seem is best sensed from within that place.

A personal example may help to illustrate this. I’ve chosen this one because it represents a particularly powerful sense of place for me, indeed one that I can still feel, thirty years and many life experiences later.

But I highlight it also because it is an example of in situ sense of place for a landscape with which I had no direct personal connection, a landscape I had never visited or seen before that day. So it certainly wasn’t any deep knowledge or memory or other purely cerebral catalyst that triggered things. Like many I had some prior knowledge of historical events relevant for this landscape, but it was simply rational understanding for me, little else.

It was in fact the being there, that more than anything prompted my strongly felt sense of place.

The landscape in question was that associated with what was then called Custer Battlefield National Monument, in southeastern Montana, in the United States. I passed through there in the crux of the summer of 1984, during a cross-country road trip.

As national monuments go, it was a fairly small and decidedly nondescript one, a diminutive speck situated amongst the endless rolling prairie and vistas of the Crow Reservation lands and in the heart of the aptly named Big Sky Country. It did have the advantage of proximity to Interstate 90, along which I was travelling west from South Dakota at the time, and I was likely drawn off that particular exit by one of those familiar brown information signs that always seemed to pique my interest when travelling in the US.

I think to properly uncover this sense of place there are some personal settings of relevance and worth noting at this point.

First, the trip that summer was in every sense a striking out on a new life for me. I was on my way to Oregon to relocate myself there and give it a go. In that sense everything on that journey was understandably more vivid, more present, for me. I was genuinely on my own, literally driving into the unknown, but because of that also possessed with a strong sense of purpose, of mission. This I knew was exactly where I was meant to be.

The drive was also designed specifically to cross the length of the northern Great Plains, and allow exploration of a region that had long represented an intriguing blank spot on my personal map. It did not disappoint. It was in fact the defining portion of that long trip across the US, affecting me in profound ways.

Lastly, though my knowledge of the events at Little Bighorn, so-called Custer’s Last Stand, was elemental, the product of history taught every school child in the US, the battle as both a decisive victory for the local tribes and the start of the demise of their cultural dominance in the region was particularly intriguing to me. Within this part of the US, moreover, evidence of native cultures and histories was much more prominent than anything I had experienced growing up on the East Coast and I was eager to absorb as much as I could. I was also at this stage of my travels fresh off a particularly meaningful visit to the Black Hills.

So in terms of the results of that summer’s day, maybe these personal factors all served to set me up, as it were, to prime me for a unique experience with place.

But it unequivocally took the experience of being there, in the thick heat of summer, with the distinct smell of the land, the steady breeze constantly changing the color and textures of the grasses on the folded hills stretching out in every direction, to bring it all together. It took the fact that I had the grounds nearly to myself that afternoon and spent my time in the resulting profundity of the silence, walking the trails to the small markers where prominent native participants, Custer’s men and he himself had fallen on that day one hundred and eight years prior. My reaction I was noticing was becoming more emotional, spiritual rather than intellectual, as would normally be the case when visiting an historical site like this.

The location that day was generating a powerfully reflective and contemplative disposition and it seemed to grow stronger the longer I stayed on the site. It was only to become even more prevalent.

Some distance from the visitor information center, near a small cluster of trees, stood two large white canvas tipis. A small homage I imagined to the native participants in the battle that day, at a national monument clearly designed to highlight the stories of Custer and the men of the 7^th Cavalry Regiment.

Whilst deciding which one to look inside, or if that was even an option, a tourist couple emerged from one of the tipis, bidding goodbye to someone inside, so I decided to follow their lead. Lifting the door flap I entered the tipi and immediately noticed a welcome drop in temperature, the shape of the tipi creating a natural chimney effect on the hot air of the afternoon. The ground was covered thick with animal hides and I was immediately invited to sit and then offered from a plastic bag something in the way of a local plant trail mix by a young man seated on the ground.

I spent the better part of the next hour speaking with this man, who was Cheyenne and who confirmed he was indeed the sole source of the Native American perspective offered by the monument. We spoke about the history, the battle, from the Cheyenne and Lakota and Arapaho perspective I’m sure, but we also spoke of a lot of things I recall, letting the conversation wander where it would in the warmth and quiet of a lazy afternoon. I was affected by his natural sense of calm, especially as concerned the battle. He was gracious in the way he shared his knowledge and enthusiastically presented his people’s perspective, but noticeably absent of any sort of personal agenda. He seemed sincerely interested in telling me his story and likewise in hearing my own.

Eventually I left his company and the tipi, emerging back into the heat of the late afternoon, changed somehow, with heightened awareness at the very least. Spending a last few minutes in this landscape, looking out over the grasslands and network of twisting coulees in the late afternoon light, contemplating it all in a new way, I was overcome with what I would now describe as a sense of place.

Importantly in this instance, I was absorbing that sense directly from the sights, sounds and smells around me while empowered with the understanding and emotional sensitivity I had gained from my walk on the hillsides and my time with the young man in the tipi. It may very well have been a combination of factors that brought this sense of place upon me just then, including to some extent the state I myself contributed to that particular point along my journey west, but it was my physical presence in the landscape that made it resonate.

In that moment, standing firmly on that hillside and open fully to the experience, I was seamlessly aligned with my context.