Action V | Connecting

For my last action this spring semester, I decided to go back to inquiring within the space of connection to the natural environment. However, this time, I decided to include my cohort. I asked them to describe (through writing) in a few seconds a place they had lived. The word place was particularly chosen not to influence too much in descriptions of human-made cityscapes. Then I asked them to write 3-5 words about a happy place. Lastly, I asked that they go back to the first place they described and describe it in terms of the natural environment. Parallel to this, I also looked into some data about green areas in places I lived and recalled some of those images. 

I then started to visualize their descriptions and my data and images through embroidery. One of my first thoughts when looking at the data was that the numbers and how I felt seemed very different. The data did not speak directly to how connected I felt to the environment when inhabiting those places. Some places had similar percentages, but that did not reflect the connection I felt to the natural environment in those places. Additionally, I used data about green areas in those cities, which may be seen differently in different countries and may not include parts of the natural world that I felt connected to. Through my data research and studio discussions, it was evident that our connection to the natural world is subjective and depends on access to it. And the attention we pay to it as well, I believe. 

In addition to visualizing the descriptions of places, I attempted to visualize the proportion between words about the natural environment and words about the human-made one. This can be seen with the “x”s in gray and green. However, I was unable to classify words such as calm.