III. OBSERVATION SKILLS AND PATTERN UNDERSTANDING
Learning Objectives: In this unit you will learn to recognize a diversity of patterns in the landscape through astute and focused observation. Charts and drawings will be presented representing patterns and processes found throughout the natural and created world. We will discuss the spiral and tree form, and shapes thereof, as the basis for all design and movement in the landscape. We will attempt to find a unified expression of geometrical and artistic understanding that will help us to perceive and conceive with the eyes and ears of the artist. Exercises in observation, discussion of what we have observed, and how these observations can be placed within a general pattern understanding, will be discussed. We will also look at how we can utilize what we find, through our observations and understanding, in our designs.
A. Pattern Understanding: Reading the Land (gathering information)
1. Seeing through the eyes of the artist
a. Shapes, relative sizes, colors, textures, edges, negative and positive space, growth levels, the canvas of the landscape, underlying design features, slope, waves and spirals, geometric forms
b. Form and function: metamorphosis of organic forms through the year
2. General patterns of models of events
3. Matrices and the strategies of compacting and complexing components
4. Properties of media
5. Boundary conditions
6. The harmonics and geometries of boundaries
7. Compatible and incompatible borders and components
8. The timing and shaping of events
9. Spirals
10. Flow over landscape and objects
11. Open flow and flow patterns
12. Toroidal phenomena
13. Dimensions and potentials
14. Closed (spherical) models; accretion and expulsion
15. Branching and its effects; conduits
16. Orders of magnitude in branches
17. Orders and dimensions
18. Classification of events
19. Time and relativity in the model
20. The world we live in as a tessellation of events
21. Introduction to pattern applications
22. The tribal use of patterning
23. The mnenomics of meaning
24. Patterns of society
25. The arts in the service of life
26. Additional pattern applications
B. Pattern Applications: how to apply what we have learned through observation and study (field walk)
1. Exercises in observation and site analysis
a. Ex: animal tracking
1. Following a trail from start to finish
2. Interpreting signs (track forms, weather imprints, trails, feeding and bedding areas, animals in the web of life, habitat, species, etc.)
b. Plant identification
1. Leaf and flower shapes and colors
2. Plant guilds and habitat based on climate, soil, etc.
3. Uses of wild plants: food, medicine, utility
4. Using the senses for identification: ex: taste tests, scent
c. Micro/macro seeing: taking in the entire perspective of the landscape, seeing things up close and at a distance
2. Problem solving: exercises on placement of elements and reasons for choices based on pattern understanding
3. Analysis and diagnosis of landscape plusses and minuses: discussion on what needs to be augmented and what needs to be eliminated or transformed based on pattern understanding
4. Processes and connections; not isolated events
a. Exercise: analysis of intrinsic behaviors, needs and products of each element
b. How each element fits in with other elements in a working whole in the landscape based on observations of patterns and relationships found in the landscape
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