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| ==AUGMENTED REALITIES OF THE INVISIBLE MICRO-WORLDS==
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| By Catalina Giraldo
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| June 21st, 2017
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| The first time I placed my eyes between a tube of two lenses it was in a cell biology class, by then I discovered the invisible worlds living under my skin, traveling through my blood currents and inhabiting my body in a way I never expected to see. I saw abstract pictures which trigger my imagination for revealing existing worlds inside of any living and apparently no living organisms. Years later, I found myself exploring all the possibilities I could choose to be a Biologist. During that searching, I started exploring with a team of neurobiologists, the peripheral nervous systems cells in order to understand how the sciatic nerve recover the path to repair when it is broken. Later on, during Geography, Geology and Botany classes I was astonished by the theories about how the Landscapes and Ecosystems changed on time as a consequence of climatic changes lead to galactic cycles around the sun but also changes in the Earth’s angle. However, which was more exciting to me about this hypothesis, it was to know the possibility of visualizing plants, types of vegetation and ecosystems that happened during these cycles of time and climate. I realized the power of studying the layers of pollen fossil trapped and conserved under specific humidity and pH conditions which are only possible to find in lakes, marshes, swamps, bogs, rivers and oceanic’s sediments.
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| I spent hours that become years sited in a special chair, watching through these two lenses and searching for special structures inside of dyed nerve cells which will reveal what happened with the sciatic tissues. Although years later, I chose the path of predicting lost ecosystems, traces of climate change, ecosystems of past times, dreaming with plants and landscapes of remote times, and it was when my travels in time and space started to thousand of years before present, travels I had the opportunity to do over the Amazon Jungles and rivers, over the Andean Cordillera’s forests, Páramos, dry forests, deserts and all the ecosystems in Colombia that captured my mind by those days, then I believed I had found my path as biologist.
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| I discovered pollen grains and spores as cells with a special structure whose design is such that will fertilize a flower carrying genetic information in a way of creating seeds and fruits. Then, the life would be a continuum of species moving in time and space. I would describe pollen as a tiny sphere or a dust particle constantly floating in the air, traveling in the rivers, along with the wind currents in the atmosphere, or as passengers of birds, insects, and mammal’s bodies. During their travels, some pollen grains find itself in a flower and will germinate to transfer the genetic information into a flower which will produce seeds, and these seeds will create plants and biomes or ecosystems, which the uniqueness are a response to the climate and geographies around the Earth.
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| Some grains of pollen will finish their trip falling on the soil and over time they will create a historical record, a library able to tell the ecological history of ancient times. Like the sand that flows through an hourglass to keep a measure of time, the pollen grains flow through the atmosphere and in the layers of sediment they land to record the time of the earth’s structure. The rain of pollen and spores is responsible for the creation of biodiversity and the flourishing of plants on Earth. It is like stardust that creates the universe. This cellular blueprint is the invisible structure that makes up our environment and provides for us a map of our current state of biological existence like traces in the sand.
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| I was just one of the explorers who used the same instrument or media object to amplify invisible micro worlds. Since the 14th century, the curiosity of experimenting with glass led to generate the firsts lenses, after combining them with tubes the first microscope was born. The microscope which means from the Ancient Greek: μικρός, mikrós, "small" and σκοπεῖν, skopeîn, "to look" or "see". It was in 1590 when Dutch lens grinders Hans and Zacharias Janssen make the first microscope by placing two lenses in a tube, then in 1667, Robert Hooke studies various objects with his microscope and publishes his results in Micrographia. Among his work were a description of cork and its ability to float in water. Then in 1675, in Delft, Netherlands, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek a businessman and scientist discovered the "animalcules”, he uses a simple microscope with only one lens to look at blood, insects and many other objects. He was first to describe cells and bacteria, seen through his very small microscopes with, for his time, extremely good lenses. Centuries later, several technical innovations made microscopes better and easier to handle, which leads to microscopy becoming more and more popular among scientists. In 1938, Ernst Ruska developed the electron microscope with the ability to use electrons in microscopy that greatly improves the resolution and expands the borders of exploration in millions of times of original size (Nobel prize, 2017).
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| While I was researching and exploring microstructures, cells, organelles dyed with different color markers as blue or pink, I feel myself as a 'micronaut' or traveler of microworlds, where you have to push your mind and imagination to improve the knowledge in Science theories. But at the same time traveling in the glass slide from one side to the other, playing with the contrasting light, objective lenses for magnification, coarse and fine focus as a ship driver I found the abstract art of the structures which give a shape to pollen grains, trees, roots, leafs, insects and all the incredible micro-architecture of nature where deep sense of harmony, aesthetic and art is imprinted. That's why centuries after its invention, the microscope continues to prove that it is not only crucial to science but can also produce works of art and outreach (Schneibel, 2016). More Micronauts have been feeling the same from different science branches and definitely using to the maximum electronic microscopes to present amazing images which millions of augmentations are needed.
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| Some interesting examples are scientist and artist as Martin Oeggerli, a Swiss science photographer who has appeared in five National Geographic feature articles since December 2009 and is using his scientific expertise and personally executed preparation, scanning-electron-microscopy (SEM) and post-processing to display his unique perspective with profound clarity (Oeggerli, 2017). Gary Greenberg who combines his passion for art and science by creating dramatic landscapes of hidden worlds, and combines his passion for art and science by creating dramatic landscapes of hidden worlds (Greenberg, 2017). And for more than a decade, the Olympus Bioscapes has celebrated some of the world’s most amazing images of life’s wonders as seen through microscopes. The Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition honors outstanding images and videos of life science subjects “shot” with a light microscope. Each year, nearly 2.500 still images and movies are submitted by scientists from over 70 countries. From those, 10 are chosen as winners (Stone 2014; Olympus Bioscapes America, 2017).
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| The microscope was my first media object to explore the hidden worlds living under the skin, under the soils, under the water and inside of any living and apparently no living organisms. Beyond imaginable, invisible worlds came up visible to my eyes as the augmented reality of nowadays, as micro-worlds that reveal macro-worlds from other times. Since then I never stop to observe the nature, first from microscope lenses but years later the analog and digital cameras become to be my second media object which combination bring to my eyes and brain beings of other times and places.
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| Cited Literature,
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| Greenberg, G. 2017. The Microscope Photography of Dr. Gary Greenberg. http://sandgrains.com
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| Oeggerli, M. 2017. The Art of Science: The microscope Photography Micronaut, the art of Microscopy, http://www.micronaut.ch
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| Schneibel, A. 2016. Award-winning images reveal the surreal beauty hiding in the tiny world that lies beyond human vision. Scientific American, December 8, 2016.
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| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-wonders-science-meets-art-under-the-microscope-slide-show/
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| Stone, A. 2014. 10 Award-Winning Microscope Images That Blur Science and Art. Mental Floss.
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| http://mentalfloss.com/article/60798/10-award-winning-microscope-images-turn-science-art
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| The Nobel Prize in Physics, 1986.
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| https://www.nobelprize.org/educational/physics/microscopes/timeline/
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| == FROM THE PLEISTOCENE TO THE ANTHROPOCENE: A story happening to the face of a planet called the Earth ==
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| By Catalina Giraldo
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| February 21, 2017
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| With this paper, I am exploring one chapter of the Earth history that took place during the Quaternary, the last 2.6 million years before the present. This era is divided between the Pleistocene and the Holocene and end with the last hundred years of our time, with a newborn period of time: the Anthropocene. This story was established through different disciplines and branches of natural and social sciences, but the last part has been built and retold in different ways and inter-crossing every kind of disciplines.
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| To draw this story on a linear timeline, the earth is 4.54 billion years old, since then she has been evolving and many changes on her surface and oceans have been sculpting to create the current shape she has. On her surfaces have hosted different climates, landscapes, species of plants and animals and other life forms. Between all of these species, we the homo sapiens are one of the most successful species with a history of just about 200.000 years, but our last civilization has emerged from industrialization to be almost completely separated from the natural systems of the planet in just hundred years. The Quaternary is the last geological era that was begun with a period of time named the Pleistocene. It was about 2.6 million years ago when started and finished just 10.000 years before present. The Pleistocene recorded different cycles of climate with a marked periodicity and it is very known that glacials and interglacials changed repeatedly and greatly the face of the earth, changes that also brought extinction, speciation and profound transformation in the geographical distribution of plants and animals everywhere (Van der Hammen, 1974). The Holocene instead is the latest part of the Quaternary, considered as well as the last and current interglacial period since 10.000 years ago until 1.950, when Anthropocene started as the current geological period (Waters et. al, 2016).
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| These glacial–interglacial cycles have been engraved in marine and terrestrial paleoclimate records from around the world. Projects like EPICA and VOSTOC amongst others have focused efforts drilling ice-cores in Greenland and Antartica to understand the global climate history. Thanks to these big pictures we know today that every 100.000 years a big change in temperature happens for about 90.000 years, as well as interglacial periods that last around 10.000 years. Some other cycles have been also determined each 40.000 and 20.000 years but more related to temperature and humidity, at least during the last part of the Pleistocene (NOOA 2017, Van der Hammen & Hoghiemstra, YR). As follows, climate change has been a carver giving shape to species and its distributions, for example, in mountains these cycles pushed species rhythmically along the slopes, opening temporary dispersal pathways or dividing populations of plants and animals into isolated remnants. Connected and disconnected populations of plants and animals created flickering connectivity systems that push species to evolve or disappear. Then, after all this time and transformations, the species of plants and animals that homo sapiens have been witnessing since its appearing about 195.000 years ago, is just a snapshot in time after million of years of change (Flantua & Hoghiemstra 2017; Hoogiemstra et.al. 2006; Scientific America 2005; Van der Hammen 1974).
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| But different to the Pleistocene and Holocene and the periods before, the Anthropocene describes a recent homo sapiens or modern human story and a new geological era where human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth like the current global warming (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000). The beginning of the Anthropocene is most generally considered to be at 1.800 after Christianity, around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe (Crutzen's original suggestion); other potential candidates for time boundaries have been suggested, at both earlier dates (within or even before the Holocene) or later (e.g. at the start of the nuclear age). However, it was published in Science by Waters et. al. (2016) that the Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene. They reviewed anthropogenic markers of functional changes in the Earth system through the stratigraphic record. The appearance of manufactured materials in sediments, including aluminum, plastics, and concrete, coincides with global spikes in fallout radionuclides and particulates from fossil fuel combustion. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles have been substantially modified over the past century. Rates of sea-level rise and the extent of human perturbation of the climate system exceed Late Holocene changes. Biotic changes include species invasions worldwide and accelerating rates of plants and animals extinction, since 1970, there has already been a 58% overall decline in the numbers of fish, mammals, birds and reptiles worldwide, according to the WWF's latest bi-annual Living Planet Index, what means that we are already losing species at a rate consistent with a sixth mass extinction event. These combined signals render the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs (WWF, 2016).
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| Furthermore, opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of earth's natural processes, global warming in the Anthropocene is a result of destroying natural landscapes, nature forests and releasing ancient stores of carbon. These alterations we have been making is causing changes in temperature, sea ice extent and carbon dioxide concentrations that can be quickly visualized in the climate time machine (NASA 2017). The oil extraction, hydroelectric construction, mono-agriculture and modern cities or jungle’s cement, can be seen as contributing factors, and a means towards our modern mutant creation. The global warming is not only a consequence of changes in the Earth’s long-range planetary motions but also a result of the land use transformations that we have been strongly accelerating in just a hundred years post-industrialization. As modern humans, our behaviors and habits have contributed to global warming through the carbon footprints, and this process is alerting us in ways that will make us change our habits to return to a balance with the earth and to remember our origins as one more species. As Davis et al. (2015) described: Critical Climate Change is oriented, in this general manner, toward the epistemo-political mutations that correspond to the temporalities of terrestrial mutation. As well, I believe that our civilization is crossing the line between the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. Perhaps, we are already living the ‘Quinary’, a new geological era after Quaternary starting with the Anthropocene, with our fingerprints already made on the layers of history deposited and eroded for million of years. In the Dickinson (2015) words: "Anthropocene is both a metaphysical concept and concrete reality: tomorrow's fossil record will reveal one story only, that on the rise and demise of the human race". In that way, the last years transdisciplinary research with its cross-pollination of art, science, design, media, ecology and different cultural disciplines are developing a critical discussion about the Anthropocene, where the arts and design are playing an active role as agents of communication and change (Anthropocene Agents 2017). As well as Alonso (2015) says: experimental artistic practice emphasizes a new combination of aesthetics and ethics and the ecological and the social can provide interesting models in helping societies adapt to this new territory of the Anthropocene.
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| There are many study cases about the current massive movement of artists exploring the metaphorical language of Anthropocene. Although, the same movement conceptually started in the 70's like Environmental Art, an expression coined as an umbrella term to encompass eco-art/ecological art, ecoventions, land art, earth art, earthworks, art in nature and even a few other less-common terms (Bower 2010), terms that definitely today are under Anthropocene umbrella concept. To bring some examples for Environmental Art, there are over 150 artists, and close to 22 Scientists & Art/Science collaborative projects, organizations, programs, and residencies focused on this Eco-Art movement (The Greenmuseum 2010), a number that is increasing with Anthropocene movement. Some of the most recent works are Taipei Bienal in 2014- The Great Acceleration: Art in the Anthropocene- where 52 artists participated. They followed the changing status of nature in the light of artificial materials and translates it into a three-act structure, turning the museum into an archeological dig (Dickinson 2015, Lin 2015). Seven billion in 2014, referring to the average population of human beings inhabiting the earth hosted at EACC in Valencia, Spain (Alonso 2015). Dark Ecology project (2014, 2015, 2016) inspired by Timothy Morton’s concept of ‘dark ecology’ and his philosophy of ‘ecology without Nature’. Morton offers a radical criticism of the modernist way of thinking about nature as something outside of us and instead proposes an interconnected ‘mesh’ of all living and non-living objects (Dark Ecology 2017).
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| Thus, the earth as an alive organism has been walking around the sun closer or further, grading the axes up and down and experiencing different glacial and interglacial periods with a signature marker by CO2, water, plants and animals prints amongst others. As well, the most recent human history has their own record already written on the earth’s surface. A question that follows now "it is how to write a new history with the knowledge and the need to change we have now but also the faster development of technologies to mend this broken balance between the earth and us?".
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| Cited Literature
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| Alonso C., 2015. Artistic Practices, Discursive Contexts and Environmental Humanities in the Age of the Anthropocene. Artnodes, no. 15 (2015) I ISSN 1695-5951
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| Bower, S. 2010. A Profusion of Terms. Greenmuseum.org. Web. Feb 21 2017. http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=306
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| Dark Ecology, 2014, 2015, 2016. Web. Feb 21 2017. http://www.darkecology.net/about
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| Davis H. & Turpin E. (eds.) 2015. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics. Open Humanities Press, London
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| Dickinson, B. 2015. Pleistocene, Holocene, Anthropocene. Features 02, ART MONTHLY, Sep 15, 389 pg.
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| Flantua, S.G.A. & Hooghiemstra, H. (2017) Historical connectivity and mountain biodiversity. In: Hoorn, C., Perrigo, A., Antonelli, A. (eds). Mountains, Climate and Biodiversity. Chapter 13. Oxford, John Wiley & Sons.
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| Hooghiemstra H., Wijninga V.M., Cleef A. M., 2006. The Paleobotanical record of Colombia: Implications for Biogeography and Biodiversity. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 93(2):297-325. 2006. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3417/0026-6493(2006)93[297:TPROCI]2.0.CO;2
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| URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.3417/0026-6493%282006%2993%5B297%3ATPROCI
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| %5D2.0.CO%3B2
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| Lin A. 2015, Taipei Biennial: The Great Acceleration. Art Review Issue. Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Jan & Feb 2015. Web. Feb 21 2017. https://artreview.com/reviews/jan_feb_2015_review_taipei_biennial/
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| NASA, 2017. NASA's Global Climate Change website. Design and programming by Moore Boeck. Concept and Research by Randal Jackson and Holly Shaftel. Animations by Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio, Moore Boeck, CReSIS. Web. Feb 21 2017.
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| https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine
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| NOOA, 2017 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/Glacial-Interglacial%20Cycles. Web. Feb 21 2017.
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| Richmond, G.M.; Fullerton, D.S. (1986). "Summation of Quaternary glaciations in the United States of America". Quaternary Science Reviews. 5: 183–196. doi:10.1016/0277-3791(86)90184-8.
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| Scientific American 2005. Fossil Reanalysis Pushes Back Origin of Homo sapiens. Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. Feb 17, 2005. Web. Feb 21 2017.
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| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-reanalysis-pushes/#
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| Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy. 2016. Web. Feb 21 2017. https://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/correlation/chart.html
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| Symposium Agents in the Anthropocene: Trans/disciplinary practices in art and design education today. 2017.Piet Zwart Institute / Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam. January 27-28, 2017. Web. Feb 21 2017. https://www.anthropoceneagents.nl
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| The Greenmuseum org. 2010. Web. Feb 21 2017. http://www.greenmuseum.org/
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| Van der Hammen, 1974. The Pleistocene Changes of Vegetation and Climate in Tropical South America. Journal of Biogeography, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), pp. 3-26 Published by: Blackwell Publishing Stable. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3038066 .
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| World Wildlife Fund. 2016. Living Planet Report. Risk and resilience in a new era. Web. Feb 21 2017.
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| == From Biophilia to Anthropocene and Solastalgia, the last global concepts to give us a key about why we should search a Re-connection with Planet Earth: our Home == | | == From Biophilia to Anthropocene and Solastalgia, the last global concepts to give us a key about why we should search a Re-connection with Planet Earth: our Home == |
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From Biophilia to Anthropocene and Solastalgia, the last global concepts to give us a key about why we should search a Re-connection with Planet Earth: our Home
In this text I will investigate new concepts created for the last three decades and coined as Biophilia, Anthropocene and Solastalgia. These conceptions have been appearing from a variety of disciplines: Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Technology and Arts, and imply studies in psychology, social justice, biology and ecology of conservation, geology, global climate change, urban planning and sustainability, between others. For this paper, I will describe the three concepts in a chronological order and then I will articulate them, but also I will attempt to answer the questions I have: Is it possible to remember our human origin as one more species on the Earth and assemble again a connection with the natural ecosystems under the use of visual arts as a tool?
In 1984 the American Biologist and Entomologist, Edward Wilson, coined the term "Biophilia" a hypothesis about how humankind, as a part of our species evolutionary heritage, has an innate need to be around living things and how we are naturally drawn to those places that in our pre-historic past, have best facilitated survival (Cleary et al., 2017). Although, “Biophilia” was first used in 1973 by the philosopher and social psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who described it as “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive”, Wilson described and popularized the hypothesis as "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.” Since then many other researchers of different disciplines have been using the concept to design urban planning as well as to find psychological health benefits and well being for our society (Cleary et al., 2017).
Some years later, in 2000 a Dutch Atmospheric Chemist and Nobel Prize-winning, Paul Jozef Crutzen, popularized the concept of “Anthropocene” which describes and proposed a new geological era where human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000). Since then a discussion between International Geological Agencies started and it is still under debate to officially accept if the Anthropocene is the new geological era. However, this year was published in Science by Waters et. al. (2016) that the Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene (officially recognized as the last geological era). They said:
The human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth. Vigorous debate continues about whether this warrants recognition as a new geologic time unit known as the Anthropocene. We review anthropogenic markers of functional changes in the Earth system through the stratigraphic record. The appearance of manufactured materials in sediments, including aluminum, plastics, and concrete, coincides with global spikes in fallout radionuclides and particulates from fossil fuel combustion. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles have been substantially modified over the past century. Rates of sea-level rise and the extent of human perturbation of the climate system exceed Late Holocene changes. Biotic changes include species invasions worldwide and accelerating rates of extinction. These combined signals render the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs.
"Solastalgia" instead is even a more recent concept developed by the Australian Environmental Philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, and it was 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 (2006, 2007) 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 threatens 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. As a new concept Albretch says:
I found that many traditional cultures and their indigenous languages have words for home-heart-environment relationships, however, it is interesting to note that modern English has very few. I created the concept of ‘solastalgia’ to fill this void and to give expression in the English language to a fundamentally important relationship between people, communities and their home environment. I also feel that we need many more new concepts that recapture the closeness that human animals have with their support environment or habitat. The realm of the ‘psychoterratic’ or positive and negative relationships between human mental health (psyche) and the earth (terra) has to be re-created in the twenty first century (Albretch 2016).
The three concepts are highly related in the way that our human species have the complete responsibility for all the global and extreme changes produced just over the last 66 years after industrialization and the highest technological development with a conspicuous establishment around the 1950’s. Our planet right now has an enormous transformation already shaped into the soils as traces of history deposited or as a new layer visible in the soil horizon and the atmosphere: the Anthropocene. As well, the consequences of the fast alteration evidenced by our fingerprints are imminent, thus our psyches and bodies are experimenting the breakdown of a natural subconsciously seek and connection with the rest of life: Biophilia, as well a lost of the support of a natural environment, habitat or ancestral home: Solastalgia.
That also means the concepts are plenty associated and interconnected with the actual global and environmental crisis and are crucial factors to make a better future for the generations coming. In Albretch words: All aspects of life - social, cultural, psychological, political, scientific and economic – we as humans need to redirect our energy and intelligence to an ethically inspired, urgent, practical response to overcoming the causes of Solastalgia (Albrecht 2007, 36). Likewise, Biophilia invites to incorporate and cultivate nature connection among urban communities to enhance psychological wellbeing through the cultivation of nature connection among urban populations (Cleary et al., 2017).
If our World right now needs to start making changes, it is urgent to help people understand and re-connect with nature in order to recover the lost memory about the need of being in touch with nature to have better quality of live. That is why I wonder if it is possible to remember our human origin as one more species on the Earth and assemble again a connection with the natural ecosystems under the use of visual arts as a tool?
First of all, I think it 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 makes the physical experience magical and deep. However, I wonder how through the use of visual arts is possible to set ideas into the people unconscious mind at any age and background, with the final objective to awake and remember the importance of being in connection with nature, especially today that we are living the times of a global climate change and environmental crisis.
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 found: 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 no degraded condition, what involve an environmental generational amnesia. The same found Bjørn et al. (2009), they evidenced with studies on outdoor activities, therapeutic use of Nature and having a view of Nature (either actual Nature or in pictures), and adding plants to indoor environments will help to have better quality of life and wellbeing.
As a conclusion, there are some evidences that demonstrate the images have some impact and are able to generate benefits for better quality of live, however the benefits are less that the actual nature. I have not found yet studies that demonstrate the visual images will help to remember the origin and the need of connection, but it is still a lot research work to do in order to find answers that help to clarify the question.
Bibliography
Albrecht, G. 2006. Environmental Distress as Solastalgia. Alternatives, 32 (4/5) pp. 34-35. 2006.
Albrecht G., & G. M. Sartore. 2007 Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change. Australasian Psychiatry. Vol 15 Supplement S97. 2007.
Albrecht G. 2016. Solastalgia, Soliphilia, Eutierria and Art. [online] Available at: glennaalbrecht.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/solastalgia-soliphilia-eutierria-and-art/ [Accessed 21 Nov. 2016].
Bjørn G. & G.G Patil. 2009. Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well-Being. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2009 Sep; 6(9):2332-43.
Cleary, A., Fielding K., Bell S., Murray Z., Roiko A. 2017. Exploring potential mechanisms involved in the relationship between eudaimonic wellbeing and nature connection. Landscape and Urban Planning 158 (2017) 119-128
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