The Substances of Landscape

Environment and landscape are often set in dualistic opposition: the environment is taken to denote the substantive processes involving the flows and energies of ecosystems, while the landscape is understood as a cultural mode of representing and perceiving framed portions of the environment. Drawing on a phenomenological conception of landscape, this article challenges a dualistic interpretation of its relationship with the environment, while preserving the aesthetic significance of landscape experience without reducing it to mere cultural taste or artistic representation. The dualistic framework is overcome by returning the aesthetic qualities of landscape to the environment itself, in the form of aesthetic potentials rooted in environmental affordances that can be perceptually activated from different perspectives. This move anchors the emergence of landscapes to the substantive processes that shape environments. In conclusion, holism and pan-perceptuality are singled out as two defining features of a substantive understanding of landscape.