The Scale Jump

In the previous post I explored (through the writing of philosopher Enrique Dussel) how the American landscape was formed by both invention and discovery and how this has been manifested in landscape and our sense of place. In addition to these formative aspects, the Americas are also defined by mobility and migration of populations, societal struggles and violence.

In reading Australian anthropologist, Michael Taussig’s The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, we can see how these societal struggles are played out, as Taussig discusses the issues that existed among South American tin mine workers in Peru and Bolivia in the early days of Capitalism and Spanish conquest. Taussig asserts that the kinship ties that defined these South American communities were "disrupted" by the oppressive ways of European conquest and ideas of Capitalism. Folk beliefs like magic were essentially "replaced" with those of materialistic and commodity driven beliefs of Capitalism.

In landscape, we can see how this has played out in spatial terms through an analysis of scales. Taussig eludes to a shift from small-scale, dispersed mining (and likely other processing of materials) in the Americas, to a large-scale, even, industrial sized production of space. As mass production, labor and movement of materials (such as tin ore) increased with European expansion, so did aspects of inequality, identity crisis and social/cultural ways of operating.

Besides the social and cultural implications of this scale jump, we can see how the “interruption” by colonialism manifested itself in landscape, as populations and migration to the Americas has increased over time.  We have essentially dominated landscape in the Americas with industrial space, cities and highways. This large-scale production of space is evident in the American landscape through mega-public works projects like the Pan American highway and the U.S. transportation landscape. An interesting comparison of this scale jump can be seen in comparing the extensive foot traffic roads and infrastructural production of space like canals of the Incas with the massive scale infrastructure projects of New York “master builder” Robert Moses and others. The transportation landscape in the Americas is direct a product of the role of technology (like the car) in shaping our modern day landscape.

The Inca Road Network http://www.discover-peru.org

A friend recently posted a review/commentary by Brooklyn based designer Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan on the aerial photography of artist Peter Andrew. Andrew documents America’s highway interstate system, particularly stacked interchanges from above. Particularly in Andrews aerial photography below, we can see the massive level at which we have manipulated landscape.

Peter Andrew's shot of the Phoenix interchange (winner of the 2013 Communication Arts Photo Annual) fastcodesign.com 

We can form a visual of this manipulation of landscape and “scale jump” through modern day mapping, drawing and aerial photography. In Taking Measures across the American Landscape, Landscape Architect James Corner and aerial photographer Alex Maclean document how through aerial photography, analytical drawings and writing, we can see, (in the words of Michael Van Valkenburgh), how “the notion that the designed landscape can become a representation of the more anonymous cultural and regional landscape.” The implications of a “scale jump” such as our massively designed highway systems, results in less human-to-human interaction to a human-to-technology interaction. And so, do we demonize our love affair with technology and landscape or do we celebrate it? I tend to side a happy medium. Now that we live in the large-scale American landscape, we need to reflect on the small scale, human-to-human operations of the past and incorporate it into our designed, and technologically advanced spaces.