Form in the Manner of Landscape: Distillation of a Concept through Language and Literature

Past work on the concept of landscape developed the idea that landscape should be viewed less as a noun than as a verb. This develops the idea that ―landscape‖ can be explored as a concept through the fabric of the word itself. This thesis explores through the ambiguity of language, the potential of a landscape idea that considers landscape a verbal action and practice, but also something that retains the objective sense of a noun in abstract representational terms. The potential in landscape to embody paradoxical ideas of movement and substance brings about the consideration of landscape as a relationship of tensions. The visibly apparent expression of a landscape product is the result of their negotiation. There is no correct ―way‖ of doing landscape but the ways in which it is done may be read as apparent propositions towards an unapparent abstract ideal. Through circumstances in time and experience the proposition is renewed and transformed to express a new proposition. This cycle is at the core of a relationship between human and land. The coherence of diversity is its self-preservation. The idea of diversity ordinarily indicates an idea of landscape framed by deductive thought processes in the sense that disparate branches and off-shoots spread the concept so thinly that it can struggle to find conceptual significance. Considering an inductive approach that draws these disparate branches back into one idea of landscape prompts a renewal in focus, outlining a basic idea or form to which circumstantial performance relates. The thesis moves from the observation of a theoretical outline to the interpretation of that theory in lived experience and finally to its articulation in a particular way through personal reflection. This study seeks a form of landscape, finds meanings in its use, and then lives the form in a meaningful manner