Nature, wilderness and ecological awareness: Exploration, experience and the creation of audiovisual artworks of a mountain

The research site is the mountain area along Tvergasteinstjørnet in Hallingskarvet mountain range in Norway. The mountain has been made by the processes of seasons, weather, geology and species and is in permanent transition. The research aim is to explore, experience and artistically articulate the mountain. This includes the experience of ecological awareness or the sense of being embedded, being part of and being vulnerable. I have developed and artistically articulated an embodied, sensuous and affective relationship to the mountain over a period of several years. The methodology is practice research and autoethnography, and the methods are wandering, place-making and writing fieldwork diaries. Field recording and art production are both research themes and research methods. The portfolio is a series of experiments with art forms and techniques. I compare them with a selection of artworks of other artists. The art forms are visual art, soundscape composition, audio documentary, multimedia and video. The techniques are the various perspectives of and relationships between visuals, sounds, voice and text. I discuss whether or how the artworks convey nature in sensory textured ways, whether or how they articulate embodied experiences and whether the artists are present in the artworks. Finally, I discuss what it takes for such artworks to articulate ecological awareness. The research is interdisciplinary, with approaches from philosophy, natural sciences, social science, visual arts and sound studies. I draw on Whitehead, Merleau-Ponty, Næss, Ingold, Böhme, Murray Schafer, Westerkamp and others. The research outcome is that the connections and discrepancy between the embodied memories and recordings are the most important source for creation of the artworks. However, the particular here-and-now experiences on the mountain cannot be mediated. Ecological awareness implies a relationship between nature and humans, and therefore the presence of humans should be indicated in the artwork, or the audience should be able to imagine such presence