User:Catalina/reserarch

How to remember our human origin as a species to connect again with Nature using visual images?

Is a contradiction to say that visual images from technological tools as cameras, computers, projectors, robots will re-connect human species to the origin and home, I mean origin as the Nature and Home as the Earth. I think is a contradiction, because I hardly believe that never will be the same experience to embrace physically a tree that watch an image printed or digital projected on a screen about myself embracing the tree. There is something else that make the physical experience magical and deep. However, I wonder how through the use of visual arts is possible to plant ideas into people unconscious mind at any age and background in order to help remembering the importance of being in connection with nature, specially nowadays that we are living the times of a global climate change and environmental crisis. The last years some new concepts have been appearing from various different disciplines to say: Earth Sciences, Social Sciences and Arts. These concepts involve psychology, social justice, conservation ecology, urban planning, and sustainability. For this paper I want to talk about some of the concepts will be useful to answer the question I have.

"Biophilia" is a hypothesis and term coined by Wilson et. al in (1984). It is about the genetically based human need and propensity to affiliate with life and lifelike process. The term "biophilia" means, "love of life or living systems." It was first used by Erich Fromm to describe a psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital. Wilson suggests that biophilia describes "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.” 

"Solastalgia" instead is a recent concept developed by the philosopher Glenn Albrecht and first introduced at the Ecohealth Conference in Montreal in May 2003 to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress. As opposed to nostalgia, the melancholy or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home, solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting people while they are directly connected to their home environment”. Albrecht (2005, 2006, 2010, 2012) coined this concept of 'Solastalgia' as a feeling of desolation or melancholia about the emplaced and lived experience of the chronic deterioration of a loved 'home' environment . In his words “Solastalgia is a combination of the Latin word solascium: comfort and the Greek word algia: pain. Solastalgia is a somaterratic illness (soma: body, terratic: earth-related) that threaten physical wellbeing and is caused mainly by living in ecosystems that have been destroyed, transformed, and contaminated by pollutants and toxins. These landscapes and ecosystems have been altered by human machinery, exploited and changed on big scales through mining, oil extraction, hydroelectric construction, mono-agriculture, modern cities etc. On my words: our modern and mutant creation.

Thereby, Biophilia and Solastalgia imply a strong human need of nature and also a negative psychological consequence for disconnection caused by technological nature, extreme land transformation and Ecocide. According to studies made by Kahn et. al. (2009), about the Human Nature Relation with Techological Nature they said: "Two world trends are powerfully reshaping human existence: the degradation, if not destruction, of large parts of the natural world, and unprecedented technological development. At the nexus of these two trends lies technological Nature -technologies that in various ways mediates, augment, or simulate the natural world. Current examples of technological nature include videos and live webcams of nature, robot animals and immersive virtual environments."

After different technological nature studies comparing human relationships with robots and virtual landscapes with natural landscapes and real animals in children of different ages and countries they found that interacting with technological nature provides some but not all the enjoyments an benefits of interacting with actual nature. Also they found that each new generation tends to take degraded environmental condition as nondegraded condition, what involve an environmental generational amnesia.

To be continued…

Bibliography Albrecht, Glenn. Environmental Distress as Solastalgia. Alternatives, 32 (4/5) pp. 34-35. 2006. Albrecht Glenn, Gina Meree Sartore. Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change. Australasian Psychiatry. Vol 15 Supplement S97. 2007. Wilson, Edward O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07442-4. Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Rachel L. Severson and Jolina H. Ruckert, The Human Relation With Nature and Technological Nature. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 18, No. 1 (February 2009), pp. 37- 42 Andrew Balmford, Lizzie Clegg, Tim Coulson and Jennie Taylor. Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokémon Bjørn Grinde 1,* and Grete Grindal Patil Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well-Being?