Troubadours

With this post I would like to give an introduction to the Troubadour Culture with the help of a short article and two clips of music.
The Occitan society during the time of the Troubadours
A description from the the book 'The world of the Troubadours" by Linda Paterson.

At the time of the troubadours, Occitan society is remarkable for its diversity as much as for its distinctive traits. At all levels it manifests a multiplicity of social groups, in variety of regions and geographical environments. But at the risk of over-simplifying, it is perhaps possible to identify certain salient features. One is a relative openness to exchange with foreigners and those of other cultures and faiths. A second is a relative absence of personal subjection. This applies to relations not only between aristocrats, but also between lords and ordinary knights who seem more likely to be waged than bound by vassalic obligations; even for peasants, burdened by taxes but rarely labour services, subjection may seem less immediate than elsewhere. An expanding mercantile economy touches social relations at all levels, producing opportunities for social mobility, and creating new oligarchies and economic casualties, though relatively few violent upheavals. Emphasis lies on practical rather than theoretical concern, whether in warfare, law or medicine. Woman, as elsewhere face misogyny, exclusion and coercion; but in Occitania they have some power and influence, a voice, albeit problematic, and social freedoms less accepted in other parts of Europe. In this courtly rather than chivalrous society, despite some signs of hostility to parvenus, knights show little sign of forming closed socio-juridical class. Taken together with a tolerance of dissident religious opinion, this suggests that Occitan society, rather than being "fractured' , was not subject to serious tensions that provoke the creation of social scapegoats. The most difficult fault line, the crack between clergy and laity, seems to have resulted from the inept authoritarian intrusion of the Gregorian 'Reform'. Occitonia was not Utopia, nor was it free from Original Sin.
But is was the first spectacular causality of the 'formation of a persecuting society', the victim of a desire on the part of outsiders to dominate and control.

I came to know the 'Troubadours Art Ensemble' fairly soon after we arrived in France.
I had heard about the Troubadours when I was young, so now was the opportunity to become more acquainted with it. So I bought several CD's and one was from a local group under the name of Gerard Zuchetto. The other CD's were beautiful, but with Gerard Zuchetto I came to difficulties. I had to stop whatever I was doing and had to concentrate and listen several times to the same song before I could discover the many dimensions of the song. As with other songs, it repeats melodies, but with Gerard Zuchetto they did sound different, because he did not want to sing just a nice song, but to express the meaning of the song. Each word was very clearly sung, sometimes half spoken. The instrumental music was not for accompaniment, but to help to bring over the whole meaning of the song. It was as if the troubadour was standing in my room.
I have now been to several performances and also Sandra-Hurtado-Ros has the ability to give all her energy in bringing over that special element of the Troubadour music, but then in her own individual way.
The first clip is an introduction,the second a concert.



The Troubadours Art Ensemble performs Occitan troubadour lyric of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a lyric known as the foundation of European vernacular poetry. They visited Stanford in early March 2010 and the video clips are from there.

Between the struts

This is the view I can have from our balcony and as I often sit there looking at the landscape, and not at the struts, I came to a very strange experience, because I don't see it as shown on the photo, unless I close my left eye and if I close my right eye I see it more or less as follows (see below)

Spot the difference!

So what happens if I open both eyes and try to focus on the whole landscape behind the struts?

The horizontal lines have 'breakages', somehow there are two images which don't coincide or fit together and not only between the struts but also behind the struts. Please note; the struts are larger then drawn( = seen) as one can see behind them. The breakages can be most clearly seen at boundaries e.g. between the large grey field and the forest behind it, or when one looks at cars driving along the road, they jump up and down, including the road.
Again, this is not only between the struts, but also behind the struts.
You can imagine that this puzzled me and I questioned myself what is going on.

I will first show you how I made a photo of what I see, more or less, between two struts and then we can go through step by step what is happening.
I took a photo what I see with my left eye, which is on the photo underneath on the right (!) and took another photo what I see with my right eye (which is on the left in the photo) and then put them together (with photoshop!). And this is more or less what I see if look fairly relaxed at the scene.
The tree in the middle (second large one fro the left)  I could see with both eyes, but they do not totally overlap, but this is difficult to see. The discrepancy is much easier to see with horizontal boundaries e.g road and the two horizontal lines at the bottom of the photo.

Image as seen with both eyes

Image as seen above railing (but with one eye!)

However there can take changes place in the image;

• If I bend my head either towards the right or left then the two horizontal lines can meet and form one line again.
• The interpenetration of the images (left and right) is stronger the further the objects are away from me.
• The interpenetration of the images (left and right) also changes if I put my face nearer the struts.

Let us do a very simple example to get acquainted with the relation between images of far and near objects. This is from the book 'Optik der Bilder' by Georg Maier.

When you focus on background.           When you focus on nearby

The first picture shows what you see when you focus on the cup;
You experience the cup as a physical object which coincides with the image from the left and the right eye. The hands are just images which don't coincide with the actual object and you can more or less look through them.
 
In the second picture it is the other way around. You focus on the stick and suddenly there are two cups.

Now the problem with the struts is that the gap between the struts is smaller then the distance between our two eyes
Let's make a sketch when you look between two struts.

Focusing on background between two stiles

Here it becomes clear that for the right eye the tree in the distance is on the right side of its visual field (red) whereas for the left eye the tree is on the left side of its visual field (blue).
However with my left eye I can see what is for the right eye behind the stick on the right and with my right eye I can see what is for the left eye behind the left stick. So I look behind/through two sticks and my visual field widens.
Here it becomes clear that the two images partly overlap and in how far, depends on the distance of the object one is focusing upon.
Also notice that in actual fact we put  two images together but they are crossed over. So the image on the right is from my left eye and the image on the left is from my right eye. This is not how we usually look at things. When we look at an object, we look with the right eye at the 'right' side of the object and with the left eye at the 'left' side of the object and through this process an object gets the character of a tangible object which occupies space as when we at the stick or at the cup in the above mentioned experiment.

Now imagine a bird from the tree is flying towards you, then the nearer it comes, the nearer the bird comes to the centre of both visual fields, that is for left and the right eye. That is why the image of the object nearer to you becomes more clear and more tangible.

Now the question why the horizontal lines have breakages;
You can do a simple experiment. Have a horizontal stick about a meter or more in front of you and then look between two flat hands at a section of the stick. Your hands should be about 10 cm apart.
Tilled your head a bit so the stick shows breakages.  If you tilt your head to left, that is left eye down and right eye up, the image on the right=(left eye image) goes up and left image (=right eye image) goes down.

But taken altogether one can see that we can squeeze in between the railings and see more then the width between the struts.

Now what do experience when we try to focus on the space behind the strut?

 

Here we can see respectively with our left eye and the right eye the tree, what is for our nose behind the strut. But here it will depend on the width of the strut in how far the images overlap. In this drawing the image of the tree can be seen with both eyes, but if our head is tilted e.g left eye is lower or higher then the right eye, then the image can be above each other. However in this instance the strut more or less disappears, it becomes transparent.

Altogether it becomes clear that what I viewed through the struts is not an illusion. This does not mean that the borders/ horizontal lines are not in line or that cars are bobbing up and down, but once we work out what is happening we understand how it comes into being.

However the experience that cars are bobbing up and down and the road is cut into pieces etc is a real experience. 

Owen Barfield, Michael Polanyi and Marjorie Grene

The main subject is; Who does the  thinking and what does our brain do.

How I came to today's subject was reading an article by Richard A. Hocks, called The “Other” Postmodern Theorist: Owen Barfield’s Concept of the Evolution of Consciousness
wherein he compares Polanyi's thoughts and Barfield's and finds many correspondences.

As it also mentions that Owen Barfield knew Marjory Grene and Michael Polanyi and spoke highly of them I became very interested. I knew already some of her works (The Understanding of Nature, Essays in the Philosophy of Nature) and had heard about her working together with Polanyi on his book 'Personal Knowledge' which led me look in Amazon.com to have a look at Polanyi's book and the comments and there I found an interesting discussion although it is partly 'old hat' for me.

 'A Customer' talks very positive about the work and he received some very positive reactions, so here follows his comment. 

Where Philosophy needs to go
I have read this book numerous times over the last ten years and I think it offers the only truly hopeful path for the current impasse that exists between philosophy/religion and the numerous popularizers of contemporary science. What Polanyi shows (himself a chemist turned philosopher) is the way that in reality scientific knowledge, like all knowledge, has an ineradicably personal element to it. That is, you learn to be a scientist not by studying test tubes but by being an apprentice to someone who already is a scientist, who teaches you, disciples you, so to speak, trains you in how to know things in a scientific way. The key element is personal trust, you must trust them, have faith in what they are teaching you, believe in them and the truth, the reality of what they're teaching. This trust aspect is the 'tacit dimension' to all scientific (and every kind of human)knowing. Not only is it interpersonal at the start, all of our knowledge also includes our involvement in a community of fellow knowers (not unlike a church!). They help to validate our knowledge, they correct us, they serve to adjudicate our discoveries. Polanyi's point is that this personal knowledge is the only kind of knowing there is, even though it is not the kind routinely set forth by scientists in their own accounts of what they're doing and what they know. The force of his description is to take away the false dichotomy between supposedly objective 'factual' knowledge and purportedly subjectively impure 'beliefs.' All knowing has a faith-based foundation to it and we're all on the same ground when it comes to arguing for coherent views of the world, of what is and what's not. It's a great book, far from easy, but as important as any book of the last century. Read it!

Then there is negative reaction from 'Magellan' entitled

  Okay for its time, but...
I don't think much of personological/subjective explanations of science, such as Kuhn's and Polanyi's, but I think their views should be heard and considered nevertheless. Western writers seem to have an odd fascination with this sort of approach, for reasons that are understandable historically but that I believe are still untenable, most of which is related to the west's obsession with the individual ego and individual consciousness and with the phenomenological and existential approaches to reality that grew out of that.
While I respect Polanyi as a scientist (he was a noted physical chemist), unfortunately I think he's pretty much gone off the deep end in terms of his subjectivistic interpretation of scientific method and of the work of the scientist, which amounts to a form of neo-Kantianism.
The first problem I have with this is that by making the human mind the final arbiter of all knowledge and sense data, a systematic ghost of an illusion pervades Polanyi's, and indeed, all Kantian theories, because there is no strong connection to external reality anymore. While I would agree with Polanyi in regard to Kant's basic thesis, that the mind is actively involved in organizing the data of the senses, and that ideas about the external world could not exist unless there were corresponding mental capabilities and constucts to match, this idea, although fine for its day, really doesn't buy you much anymore in my opinion. This is for two reasons, which is the problem of illusionism which I just mentioned, and the second is the approach that has now emerged from the last 75 years of work in neurobiology and the brain sciences, of which these writers seem blissfully unaware.
Although we still have a lot to learn, the picture that has emerged so far is both fascinating and impressive. For example, there are 60 trillion cells in a human brain organized into 14,000 major and minor brain centers, and they are all networked together. Each individual neuron has between 3,000 and 100,000 connections with other neurons, producing a neural web of unbelievable complexity.
Most sensory neurons are devoted to using feature-detecting algorithms that require advanced calculus to understand, as David Marr has shown. For example, to mention just a few of his important ideas, Marr's demonstrations that retinal receptive field geometry could be derived by Fourier transformation of spatial frequency sensitivity data, that edges and contours could be detected by finding zero crossings in the light gradient by taking the Laplacian or second directional derivative, that excitatory and inhibitory receptive fields could be constructed from "DOG" functions (the difference of two Gaussians), and that the visual system used a two-dimensional convolution integral with a Gaussian prefilter as an operator for bandwidth optimation on the retinal light distribution, showed that the level of mathematical sophistication as well as just brute computational power that is being devoted to sensory information processing is beyond anything we could have imagined.
Since Marr's time, there has been further progress in this area, such as the Bela Julesz's demonstrations that the visual system can extract and compute binocular disparity cues point-by-point for depth information from abstract, non-representational pictures such as random-dot stereograms. There is also the extension of Marr's ideas about monochromatic edge detection into color edge detection, the mathematical theories of nonlinear visual field distortions present in optical illusions, and many other areas.
Finally, consciousness itself may yield to research on the brain. In the last few years, consciousness has been shown to be composed of many different separate mechanisms in the brain that are being coordinated in time in order for consciousness to occur. It isn't a single process or central program that runs in the brain, nor is there a "master" brain center that one can point to where it can be said that consciousness resides, contrary to classical philosophical models which regarded it as unitary and indivisible.
Hence, there is very little reason anymore to insist on the fundamental subjectivity of perception in the Kantian sense. It is true that there are visual illusions at the higher levels of sensory perception, but those are now regarded as special cases, and they are being shown to be explainable in terms of mathematical visual field-distortion theories of these mechanisms that can be quantified just like the basic sensory processes, as I mentioned above.
Another reason neo-Kantian theories don't buy you much is to consider the work of cognitive psychologists and psychometricians like J.P. Guilford. Guilford has evidence for 120 different, discrete mental abilities. We have only just started to find out how all these areas and abilities actually work, but the resulting theories will far surpass in detail and complexity the simplistic philosophical generalizations of previous centuries about how knowledge is acquired and ideas are formed.
The bottom line at this point is that classical ideas like Kant's really aren't wrong, but they are like what classical Newtonian physics was after Einstein, correct as far as it goes, but just a piece of a much more profound, bigger picture. And the rest of that picture will be filled in by work in neurobiology and cognitive psychology, not by further vague philosophical speculation, which can only propose the most general explanations about these epistemological questions, rather than demonstrate in detail how the mind and the brain actually perceive and extract information from reality and then use the information from sense data to generate ideas about the real world. 

 Then there follows a reaction again from 'A Customer' entitled

 In response to "Good for it's time, but..."
"Personal Knowledge" by Michael Polanyi is still a valuable contribution, even now.
"Magellan" has said that subjectivist investigations don't buy you much anymore, but consider this:
Objectivist investigations don't tell you anything about how to use your own mind- the only tool you have for understanding Science to begin with. Yes, our brain is incredibly complex- yes, it has scientifically-investigatable structures which may be responsible for our consciousness- but without the actual, unavoidably personal use of your brain, you have nowhere to begin. I have all the structures that Magellan discussed in my brain, serving me at this very moment- but their function is underneath even what Polanyi calls "subsidiary knowledge". We can be aware of how our mental processes appear to behave to our conscious mind, but we are not aware of the work and usage of our individual neurons. If Magellan can show me how to become aware of the individual structures in my brain with all their individual neurons, and consciously micro-mangage their function in a way that results in me obtaining a better understanding of the world than I have only through the subjective perspective of my conscious mind, then I will say Polanyi is useless.
Until then, exclusively Objectivist investigations of the conscious mind won't buy you much, in terms of understanding how you (necessarily working out of the perspective of your own state of consciousness) comprehend the world we live in. If you want to learn something, anything, from science-- and still retain a sense that you can legitimately use your own subjective mind (albiet carefully) as you learn-- then it is worth reading Polanyi.

I don't want to criticise 'Magellan' as later he does say that he might have gone too far, but the way he thought is so typical for those who don't think further then their nose or only see what they think is outside them (matter) that they don't reflect that they make constantly judgements with their minds.(or their neurons?)

I would like to end with two quotes

"if one is of the opinion that the brain thinks instead of ourselves, then
one also transfers the problem to the next question; namely how does the brain come to think?"

by Rudolf Steiner in his 'Philosophy of Freedom'

 “Either there is no knowledge (including the knowledge of philosophical
atomism) or there is at least the knowledge that philosophical atomism is false.”

         by Marjorie Grene in  'The Understanding of Nature '.

Landscape perception workshop 10-17 july 2010 (short version)

 This report was written by me and then edited and published by Bud Young from 'Landscape Research'

LANDSCAPE PERCEPTION WORKSHOP AT THE FOOTHILLS OF THE FRENCH PYRENEES

Lac Montbel

At Lac du Montbel , the first day, facing south towards high mountains, a varied group of European landscape enthusiasts examined what it was they saw. Using drawing it was evident that everyone noticed the lake, the hill with its village, an intrusive water-tower and fields. Behind that they recorded a hill-ridge covered with trees and still beyond, the high mountains. Notably each person had a different take on the scene.  One looked at geological features, one just at colour, another majored on agricultural features and the other noticed the mood/atmosphere including the sounds. Predictable perhaps, interesting certainly. The 'Legible Landscape' manual, which is widely used in Holland to engage people in landscape and its development, was issued to offer guidance for the following days.

Recognizing that landscapes contain many different factors, both large and small, the next day the group concentrated on plant observation by walking through a deep gorge to a high mountain plateau. The main task was to observe the many different manifestations of plant growth (forms, colours etc.) in relation to their distinctive sites.

In the evening they were introduced to Merleau Ponty through a work by David Seamon  and discussed how we experience and are engaged in the world. The main idea is that it is through our perceptional experiences that our body-subject learns/knows  how to interact with the world and it is only partly through cognitive (conscious) endeavours that we experience the unlearned.

The group went out for a day to practise a ‘Legible Landscape’ session on the edge of a large flat valley facing Puivert Castle.

Puivert

In the evening through a work by G Maier the group was introduced to Aesthetics as a new way to acquire knowledge, based on sense-perception and experience and not on logic or abstract thoughts. What came to the fore was that any appearance is a combination of many factors and elements (they can even be in a certain way, outside our vision e.g sun in case of shadows or plant growth) many of which we miss due to our original intentions. The main aim was to bring across how the many factors: light, weather and even personal attitudes, play a crucial role in how we ‘meet the appearance’ or ‘how we experience the event’ and the more conscious we are of these relationships and the more numerous they are, the richer the aesthetic experience. The group seemed to have taken this in and the theoretical parts became more a discussion group around a few central thoughts, readings or texts, rather than a course instructor’s presentation.

near Lac Soulcem

The next morning, they visited  the 'End of the World, a valley deep in the high mountains bearing the imprint of human presence; the water reservoir, the shepherds huts and cheese making rooms and the grazing cattle. What the group asked itself here was, what would it look like without such signs. Here the combination of sheer vastness of it all, the feeling of the pre-historical ---geology) and understandable history (the shepherding activity), the silence and their own small presence, constituted an experience of the sublime.

Plateau du Sault

Subsequently on the Plateau du Sault, a remote high place between the mountains, the group explored together a landscape which has not yet been spoiled by adverse developments. There, a 'Legible Landscape' walk and the act of drawing architectural features in the village  revealed the bones of an archetypal mediaeval landscape: the church in the middle, houses all around and beyond these the intensive vegetable and fruit gardens  and the further fields with a mixture of variable arable crops and intensive meadows, all encircled by more extensive grass fields; beyond this the forest.  It was an experience that the landscape here was a cohesive unity and had a strong identity as if everything grew ‘out of the ground’  Was it because it was so isolated? Certainly it was not easy to get there!

The group's experience of how the landscape reflected  mediaeval Occitan society was deepened by visiting the medieval centre of 'La Cite' in Carcassonne and  a village where the houses were situated in an accurate circle around the church. From Fanjaux, a hill-fort village and important historical site they had a marvellous view of the large broad valley below,  situated between Bordeaux (Atlantic) and Narbonne (Mediterranean), with  its harmonious patterns of fields, hedges, and villages, and across in the far distance the Montagne Noire (Haute Lanquedoc). A true example of the working together of nature and culture through time.

View from Fanjaux

Editor’s note
This appears to have been a thoroughly European event. The group comprised one Welshman, one Latvian, one Dutch lady living in Finland and a man and woman from Spain. Days in the field were accompanied by evening discussions and a presentation.

Rainbow. Is it really there? (Owen Barfield)

This article is about the introduction chapter of 'Saving the Appearances' by Owen Barfield, which you can find here below;

I am writing about this chapter, because we used it in our landscape perception workshop (July 2010) and in the discussion that followed the idea soon arose that our way of viewing the world was partly our construction, but then some of us went so far as to think, that even our pure sense-impressions were also our - or better said our -  bodily constitution's construction.
However some of us felt that this was going to far. The world, which we perceive (colours, smells, resistance etc.) are also there independent of us (and not only atoms, or whatever they are = the unpresentable).
After reading the chapter again and again and then with the help of the excellent article by Stephen Talbott, called Evolution of Consciousness  and then the two other excellent articles by Jason Peters Owen Barfield on the Metaphysics of Modern Science and Owen Barfield on Inspiration and Revelation  and the one by Caryl Johnston called Thoughts and Things: Reviving Liber Naturalis,  I came to the following;
Owen Barfield states in his foreword that the book was not written for discussing metaphysics.
So he does want not point out (as I thought too!) to the problem of the primary and secondary qualities of sense-perceptions that is e.a. touch (matter) and resp. sight (colour), or describe in what form atoms, energy etc. exists.

He only wants to point out that what we see (and only see and not think) is a vast area of colours (in the case of sight) without any connection or patterns in between.
But in our daily life we automatically think 'rainbow' or 'chair' etc.
However,  to come to that, we have to think 'chair'; that is;
1)  it is physical ( we, with our body can sit on it)
2) it has a reasonable flat surface, which is not to low neither to high.
3)  it has a support for our back or at least for a part of it.
4) or any other thoughts we have with it.

In case of the rainbow; it is an arc, in the form of half a circle, it has rained and the sun shines and it has a variety of colours in a specific order etc. etc.

So a lot of thinking has gone on before we unify the concepts chair, rainbow with what we see.

This is what Owen Barfield calls figuration and we are not often, I might as well say, seldom aware of it .
However if we can't figure (!) it out, then we need to do some alfa thinking.
For example when we see things we have never seen before or have not a clue about.

The intention to use the article for my workshop was to stress or bring over;

1) That the sense-perceptible world (pure sense-perception) is a reality, but not the full reality!
2) And that the way we interpret it (figuration) depends on our way of thinking about it (and mostly how we have thought about it the past (habit) or worse; what we were told about it)

During the session we also talked about that the way we see the world (as pure sense-impression) indeed  depends on our constitution (our eyes for example) and we know that some animals perceive the world only in black and white or some primitive animals only by the lower senses (touch, movement, balance).

But this does not mean that we (or perhaps better said; our constitution) fabricates or creates the colours etc.

Later during the week when we started to realise that the landscape contains the interplay between natural and cultural factors and when we viewed the landscape in all its glory, we realised it is only given to us, as human beings, to see the world in its full glory. Even the Gods can not see it like that!

Is this helpful or am I  still not understanding it?
I hope you understand what I meant to say, that is, get my speaker's meaning.

I wrote this also because I read a few articles where Owen Barfield is totally misunderstood and this is not very good for the reputation of Owen Barfield's work.

In one article I read that Owen Bafield means that only atoms and energy exists and the rest we make up, to say it bluntly and in another one somebody said that Owen Barfield says that words are idols and both comments came from people who were very much in favour of Owen Barfield.
However this is understandable if one reads quickly  and read what one wants to read.
And that is easily done.

Workshop 10-17 july 2010 (Longer Version)

This workshop took place in Bastide sur l'Hers in a beautiful house from friends of us, and we had a wonderful space to work in and each had a bedroom for his/her own.

Jon, an old friend of us from England, arrived a few days earlier and so helped to set everything up (Thank you!) Ricardo and Isabel from Spain arrived at around 16.00, but Vladimir (Latvia)) and Karin (Dutch, but living in Finland) only arrived at around 19.00.
However Tee, my daughter in law, had prepared an excellent Thai meal.
After dinner we introduced each other and went through some practicalities (rota for making supper etc)

Sunday; Lac Montbel

Morning session
    1.    Made drawing of 'our landscape', where we grew up or where we lived or what landscape impressed us
    2.    Introduced some pictures/drawings in order to become conscious how we see or look at things.


Lac Montbel
Outdoor session; We first went to the north side of the lake and focused on the view facing south towards the high mountains. Some of us also took the opportunity to go for a swim.

Then, after coffee(!) we went to the other side of the lake and this time we went our separate ways, but generally faced north. Afterwards had picnic lunch and shared our experiences.


We soon realised that we all looked at different aspects, not only because we have different interests, but also because of our knowledge (geology, agriculture e.g) or experience (to have lived there) but once we shared our experiences each came to a more complete and comprehensive picture.
Some of our observations;
The yellow between water and islands looked like sand, but it was clay.
How would the landscape look like if there was not a village, from where  people had created the fields and cultivated several different crops? Boring?
There was a ridge of hills from east to west with a gap in it. This ridge is not only a physical boundary but also a cultural boundary between mountain culture and the lowland culture.
The further you looked the colours become more hazy. Mountains are  more or less greyish blue.

Late afternoon session

What aspects do we see in the landscape?
Introduced Landscape conceptional models from the work of Jan Diek van Mansvelt and Benedetta Castiglioni (see Landscape page)
Main ideas; Landscape is a combination of natural and cultural factors.
What we see as image is the result of these factors, but what we notice is determined by our interests/intentions.
Also introduced the European Landscape Convention (see ELC)

Supper; This was prepared by Adriaan and Jon and soon realised that we were short of time. So for the next days we added half an hour for preparation of the meals.

Evening session
Introduces the work 'Legible Landscape',  a dutch manual for landscape character assessment, based on the thesis by Karina Hendriks and Dirk Jan Stobbelaar, which is often used for landscape walks or projects in Holland to enhance participation in landscape development.
Adriaan had translated this work, but had also prepared a key-note presentation.
We went through the manual, but this did not work out so well as he thought. The key-note presentation might have worked out better. Ah... well, next time!
However we all understood that we can look at the landscape from different perspectives and the next few days during our walks we concentrated on the vertical(why do these plants grow there), horizontal(paths, roads, watercourses), seasonal(what time of year are we?) and historical (what has taken place here?) dimensions of the landscape.
Karin soon came to realise however that sounds were absent in the manual and of course this is a very important item in landscape experience.

Monday Gorges de la Frau

After a short introduction to the theme of day (Plant observation in the Gorges  and Legible Landscape session in Pays d'Aillou), we went of to the starting point of our fairly long walk!
After a very short introduction about plant growth we walked up the Gorges with the task of not talking (!) and observing the many different forms plant can create and we were to choose to draw one plant.

 When we came out of the Gorges we still had a fair way to go to enjoy a cup of coffee at a very nice place in Comus.


Then we walked through beautiful hayfields with a great variety of flowers direction Montaillou, but we stopped half way and found a good picnic spot from where we could see Prades, but from Montaillou only the castle ruin.  Some of us walked a little bit further and we could just see the church below Montaillou.

Walked to and had picnic lunch on top of the little hill in the middle of the photo.

Terraced?

View from our picnic place

We were rather tired from the walk, some of us are getting on a bit, and so we did not manage to do a 'Legible Landscape' session.

On the way back we had another coffee and shared our plant drawings.
Then on our way back we had the wonderful experience of clouds appearing over the mountains and later out of the Gorges.

View back to direction Comus

Afternoon session
Introduction to plant metamorphosis mainly with help of the work done by Jochen Bockemuhl
and in relation to tree growth on resp south and north facing slopes.
However because most of us were already partly acquainted with it, we didn't spend much time over it.

Supper; A delightful and exotic meal prepared by Ricardo and Isabel. Thank you!

Evening Session
Introducing the work of David Seamon (Geography of the Life World) and Tim Ingold ('Stop, look and listen' from the book 'Perception of the Environment')
We spend most of the time on David Seamon and read an extract about the body-subject and its
This was at the same time a good introduction to the work of Merleau-Ponty.
At the end of the evening I gave two papers, one with exercises in relation to the senses and my Goethean Essay (see My Articles), what is actually also an exercise in relation to the senses.

Tuesday Puivert

Morning session
Introducing the senses; We did the exercise in relation to the senses, which is based on the work of Richard Box 'Drawing; a course for the fearful or terrified”! and then elaborated on by Adriaan.
We became aware, especially in relation to sound, that we don't have to hear sounds in our ears, but there where the sounds are coming from! Is this not the same we can do (intend) when we see things?
In reality we can zoom in on certain areas and then we see things more clearly.
Also we became aware that we don't see 'things', but only shades of colour but because we move our eyes along edges we become aware of form. The rest we add, partly because of other sense-perceptions of past experiences (touch etc), but mostly we add concepts (tree, rocks, houses etc).
Another question came up; are airwaves  the same as sound and are electromagnetic waves the same as colour?
I hope I managed to show that this is not the case!
We realised that we could go on for a long time but we decided to leave it at that for tonight!
So off to Puivert and concentrate on a 'Legible Landscape' session.

Puivert

From where we were went, we could see Puivert in the distance (in the gap between the 2 hills) and just on the right you can just see Puivert Castle. More on the right (not on photo) is the village where we went to see the farmer and he showed us his barn and shed in the middle of the village, where he keeps his cows and sheep.
Jon and Vladimir (on a haybale) are drawing while I made the coffee! This time the task was 'Legible Landscape' so we looked at the vertical dimension (why do certain plants grow on this spot) horizontal dimension (outlay of roads, watercourses, hedges), seasonal dimension (which time of year are we) and the historical dimension (what features are there from what time)

 View facing west (by Vladimir)

                 
Afterwards we had a peaceful lunch (and a swim!) at the lake on the edge of Puivert and after lunch we went to visit the castle, which at the same time gave us opportunity to have excellent views of the surroundings.
Driving through the village on the way to the castle, we noticed 'old' toilets on the middle of the bridge.                                                                             

Puivert; Main entrance 

Music room

In the morning we were just on the other side, at the foot of the mountains

Puivert village and lake

On the way back we talked about the troubadours and the general cultural situation around medieval times.

Afternoon session
After shopping we had a game session;
    1)    Putting about 12 photos of the same landscape in chronological order.(and not only of over one year period!)
    2)    Putting pictures of branches in the right position. How do we know in which position they grew on the tree?

Supper; Another excellent supper prepared by Karen and Vladimir

Evening Session
Introduced the work of Georg Maier  and his colleagues by reading first the introduction 'Two smiles" of the book  'Matter and Mind' (new title 'Marriage of Sense and Thought') (see Goethean Science)
Then introduced the work 'Being on Earth, Tending the Appearances' specially the chapters in relation to Aesthetics and Baumgarten.
However I soon trailed off to the idea that what we see depends not only on our intentions, but even  on our organism, and that can easily lead to the opinion that the world we see is our own creation and sounds and colours are not existing independently of us. (neither matter!)
Karen put her foot in this and Jon supported her, but Ricardo partly supported my idea.
However we all agreed that we were partly both right, but we needed to workout upon on what aspects we were talking about. Ricardo and me realised that there is indeed something added to the world
when we are focussing on an appearrance, first the experience, secondly we meet the object with
a general concept to meet the unique appearance with its specific, inherent concept.
(I will come back to this problem sometime as I have occupied my self with this since)
So we jumped from Aesthetics straight to the subject of the next day and we read Owen Barfield's first chapter of “Saving the Appearances” called 'Rainbow' (see Post nov 2010) before we went to bed.
However I think the idea came over that in daily life we first have an aesthetic experience (experiencing the whole) where from we can select certain aspects, but then we should not forget to put it back into the whole and realise we can look at different aspects another time.
Also I felt that from this evening onwards all of us became more engaged and made the workshop successful.

Wednesday Lac Soulcem

Morning Session
Read Owen Barfield's "Rainbow” article and the next chapter (not helpful I think) and this was supplemented by a short part of Georg Maier's writing in relation that we can't have it both ways. (Cat and mouse)
Colour and matter are both objectively present, but we experience them in our way (that is as human beings) that is through the senses (resp colour and resistance) and through thought (natural laws)
But our thoughts are not coming by themselves, we have to be actively involved. But we can also leave it and walk past. Also we experience the world through feelings, each landscape has a certain atmosphere. What is it out there what resonates in us. It is not only visual, but something elemental?

Lac Soulcem; The way we came from     

Where we have to go through

Next stage; Where we came from

                                                       

Where we go to (walking this time!)

                                                         

Shepherd's huts on the way

Where are the cows and horses?

End of the world?

Jon facing the hight mountains

Ricardo and Isabel facing to and away from the mountains

       


Supper; A reasonable supper prepared by our host Betsy and Adriaan.

Evening session

Can't remember exactly but we continued our discussion from the morning, and it was to explore what is our connection with nature, which expresses itself in all kinds of forms, shapes and sizes etc.
We feel there is a connection between us and them (plants, animals landscape)  and I brought the image that during world=man's evolution plant and animals separated to early/incarnated to early (from a certain point of view!), but they were part of our humanity. Is this why we feel connected with them. Same roots?

Suggested reading before going to bed; Owen Barfield's chapter how people in mediaeval times experienced the world in comparison with how we experience it. (from 'Saving the appearances', see Evolution of Consciousness)


Thursday Plateau du Sault

Morning session
Introduction to the phenomena that during the Middle Ages, arable farming, animal husbandry, vegetable and fruit growing were for the first time integrated into a unity and the main cultural impulse in the west was Christianity which radiated from the centre of the village(church) for many years to come.
These landscapes we now observe as the aesthetic harmonious landscapes all over Europe. Around the village the fruit and vegetable growing then further out the animals and then the arable fields and then further afield(!) other fields (hay) and then at the border of the communities the forests.
Only recently landscapes have became fragmented.

Plateau du Sault
We went to the village Rodome and from there did a 'legible landscape' walk, that is we looked from several different perspectives. We saw some kind of cereal which was a cross between rye and wheat.
This time we also wanted to explore architectural features so at the end of our walk we went into the village and made some drawings.

On the way out of the village (field with oats)

Notice the many small but well looked after fields

                          

South facing slope with beehives

During our walk we came to the conclusion that this was a highly 'Legible Landscape' as nearly all features came out of the landscape itself with nearly no foreign elements present.

Cows at last!

We met a farmer and he explained this was not wheat, neither rye but a cross between them and was used for breadmaking. Vladimir brought to our attention that one can just look at shadows and notice that they can tell us a lot about time of day, year and where we are on earth (south or north etc)

Vladimir brought to our attention that one can just look at shadows and notice that they can tell us a lot about time of day, year and where we are on earth (south or north etc)

Shadows! Why do you make the arch Gothic, Vladimir?

Lunch

Valley behind, towards the Gorges d'Aude

Valley behind towards the Gorges the Aude, which is just behind the end of the field, but about several hundred meters down! At the end of this field we found this stone; on one side the languedoc cross and on the other side the lily.                         

Back home and this time Karin and Vladimir prepared the main meal and Ricardo and Isabel a fantastic cold soup.

Evening session

A key-note presentation of the history of Landscape Painting from the middle ages to around the beginning of the last century. This was  also attended by our host and family of Adriaan.

Main features of History of Art

•    Painting was 2 dimensional and depicted spiritual subjects

    •    First landscape around 1400 and then from that time onwards the Flemish and Dutch artist eyes opened their eyes to the sense-perceptible world around us. And depicted the world as we see it now (Vermeer) including daily life and people.

Small detail of Flemish religious painting

    •    Later the reverence to the Gods was replaced by reverence to Nature (Romanticism; Friedrich)

    •    With Impressionism people became aware of the momentary dimension (Aesthetic) of our perceptions (Monet) and experimented with colour to express the impression it made on them or to express the essentials of a landscape.(Cezanne, van Gogh)

    •    And this led to Expressionism with many diverse forms, but one characteristic is that it led again to 2 dimensional painting. And that is what a painting is!  Frans Marc, Picasso,  Kadinsky, Klee, Munch etc

    •    At that same time photography came up and here it becomes very clear that photos depict a highly 'aesthetic' picture as it depicts a scene at one particular moment (1 second?)

Friday Carcassonne
Morning session
Brief introduction  to medieval history; development of fortified villages and cities.

Carcassonne
Went to Carcassonne via the backroad
Walked around, mainly between the inner and outer wall, had coffee and then each went his own way to do a drawing/observation exercise.
Castle within La Cite
Where are the tourists?

Castle within La Cite

Where are the tourists?

After a good lunch we drove back but on the way we drove through La Force, where the houses were build in a circle and then we stopped at to fields to see Jon's sunflowers
and then we stopped at Fanjaux where we had spectacular views of the landscape with many clear pattern. We could have spend there a long-time.

View from Fanjaux

When we arrived home Karen prepared another substantial meal and in between we shared our drawings and read in our own time an extract from Tim Ingold's article 'Stop, look and listen' (see Phenomenology page) which was another good introduction to the work of Merleau-Ponty.

Evening session
Introduced some of the work done by others in relation to how people in the past (but partly also present day hunters and gatherers) lived within the landscape, for example Gurevich, Goff and Richter.
How the landscapes are a product of that time and that in a certain way through the christianising of the landscape we are now able  to see the world in all it's glory.
In future harmonious landscapes can only come about if we learn to see the world in all its different aspects, that is not only through ones own eyes, but also other people. We not only need a multi-disciplinary approach, but also an 'inhabitated' (experiental?) approach.
Then we had a review of the week and to make this possible I offered some self-critique, where in I expressed that I was not happy with my theoretical parts in the beginning of the week, but through the input of the participants we came to some lively and engaged discussions and this made it possible for me to offer relevant material to pursue the questions we came up with.
And that was and is just the whole idea and purpose of the workshop.

Saturday Farewell and Monsegur
Morningsession
We invited Betsy in order to say thank you and managed partly to reiterate where we spoke off in last evening's session (the influence of christian culture in the landscapes of  Europe)
Packed up and as bonus we went to visit Monsegur, which was totally in the clouds.

However we managed to get up there and after our last coffee together, Ricardo and Isabel left for Spain and the others were taken to the Toulouse to find their train or airplane to take them to their next destination.

The End