As an act of compassion for each other, how can we employ our interpretive skills to help bolster the close directions from the health authorities to help flatten the Corona curve, slow things down and save lives? Paying attention to the world around us can be an antidote to the isolation being prescribed to avoid COVID -19 infection. This can take place in the built environment with architectural details as well as in nature with exuberant biodiversity.
However, we know fresh air and contact with the natural world help with a psychological and physical health regimen needed to counteract cabin fever when dealing with the required self-isolation.
The challenge is to be find strategies to absorb more from the world around you while social distancing. We have a few to share.
Helping people on all levels find solace in observing signs of spring and listening to birds is an important task, starting with what is happening just outside their window and progressing to a neighbourhood walk and trip to a park. Along with the inherent qualities that interpreters possess, we want to share ideas from two books that should help you ramp up observations, by providing fun new perspectives. Helping friends and neighbours this way is a given but many of these exercises can also be used, with a little ingenuity, for your site visitors, using a self-guided approach. This allows you to be productive and generate material from home.
A little book with a big punch by Rob Walker called The Art of Noticing (2019) is a compilation of 131 ways to discover joy in the everyday. The author makes a point (pre-COVID-19) that the most vital human resource in need of protection now and in the future is our mental space. He is coming from the perspective of counteracting the culture of distraction and releasing one from device connection. DIY techniques are supplied in Walker’s book as a way to regain business and social focus along with creativity and innovation. We can easily employ these in service of getting outdoors (with social distancing) and improving our ability to NOTICE. Creativity and innovative qualities will no doubt also bubble to the surface as a bonus to the mental health boost gained by being alert in the outdoors, both in the natural and built environment.
Walker borrows from a whole range of sources to encourage an enlightened reading of our world. Here’s a few highlights from the section entitled “Sensing” starting with a great quote from visual artist Nina Katchadourian,
“My job is really to pay attention and see what’s there that we haven’t seen yet. I am always trying to look at things we are overlooking and underestimating in terms of their interest or value.”
Does that not describe our job as an interpretive planner? Then we just add to that the role of assisting our visiting public to “see what’s there that they haven’t seen yet.”
Nina asks her students to notice something they always notice; now notice something they’ve never noticed. What an enticing provocation one could use with heritage site visitors! This works of course, better when setting up subtle ways of discovery, rather than a command to your visitor.
a rock surface image Photo credit Bill Reynolds
Incorporating the act of describing the “always noticed” item pulls the visitor into seeing more details of something taken for granted. We have used this technique in the fall using leaves and it is amazing how different aspen or poplar leaves can be when you slow your visitor down to absorb what is around them. When you set up the exercise of finding a leaf that speaks personally to the individual visitor because it shares similarities with them – well, you open up a variety of emotional bonding that you could never anticipate.
Dealing with the “never noticed” item, sometimes we have to help visitors change their vantage point by getting on their hands and knees to explore a microtrail or we position them at weird angles so they appreciate a tree from different perspectives.
Nina has been described as performing curiosity. Would you not love to describe yourself that way? “I perform curiosity so that my visitor engages with our special place.” Known for her playful conceptual pieces Nina has a section on her web site titled, “Uninvited Collaborations with Nature,” which is guaranteed to give you a chuckle and provide you with interactive program inspiration for your visiting public… like spider web repairing.
To awaken our senses, Walker recommends that we “Make a Sound Map.” Jumping out at me, within this exercise, was a second attention getting quote (in bold no less): “The world is a museum. You are the docent.” This was attributed to music writer and instructor at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Marc Weidenbaum. He takes his students on an urban soundwalk where he gets them to notice where, when and how sounds work, regardless of whether they are ephemeral or immobile. They are challenged to create a sense of place soundmap charting audible points of interest – potentially functional, historical, cultural, and natural.
Did you know that you can take sound shots (audio snapshots) using the voice memo app on your phone? Walker encourages us to do this and replay them to a friend then see if they can pinpoint the locale. Can you see how this could play out at your centre as a form of interaction between visitor and certain aspects of your site?
He profiles Peter Cusack, a self- proclaimed sonic journalist, who gets people talking about the way they hear everyday sounds and what they think or feel about them. Instead of asking how a place looks he asks how does it sound. Peter produces a favouritesounds.org web site.
How about crowd sourcing from your visitors a favourite sounds web site for your interpretive space? Watch out, you may end up in places you have never heard of before.
Here is another idea from the book -”Take a Scent Walk” - a tool for discovery and exploration. He cites Dr Kate McLean, an artist and designer, who is a creator of smellmaps of cities around the world, working at the intersection of what she calls “human-perceived smellscapes, cartography and the communication of ‘eye-invisible’ sensed data.” She captures scents and embeds them on scratch- and-sniff cards. One can download her DIY smelfie guide to smellwalking at https://sensorymaps.com/about/
Having your visitor be their own docent and giving them hints on how to create their own map can lead in so many directions. Having them take a sensory focus other than visual- what a concept. Having them share their map with others – what engagement.
All this sensory awareness play brought back memories of handing out what we called scent catchers (one- inch square sponges having been soaked in a mystical solution) to visitors to use under their nose. This took place each time nature walk participants would scratch the surface of a natural object to release the smell then sniff the released scent. This sensory awareness activity was one of several stitched together into a different kind of nature walk called an Earthwalk.
shelf fungus Photo credit Bill Reynolds
The intent was to slow down:
enjoy a light refreshing touch of nature
celebrate nature not study it,
explore with the senses not with an identification guide and
discover the unseen and ignored hiding in natural patches.
A series of earthwalks have been designed and painstakingly developed by Steve Van Matre and Associates from the Institute of Earth Education over a series of decades. A book describing these carefully crafted activities that aim at developing the feelings of joy, kinship, reverence, and love for the natural world is now available. Having both led earthwalks, Mike and I can attest to the highly impactful, and refreshingly fun experiences they are. We will have a review of this book in an upcoming blogpost. For now check out Earthwalks; an alternative nature experience at http://www.ieetree.org/education-tree/earthwalks/ see page 20-21 in this flip style digital catalogue http://www.ieetree.org/sourcebook_iee/
As I was just about to put this blogpost to bed, I came across a fitting passage from the 1960’s I needed to squeeze in. Louis de Kiriline Lawrence wrote with a lyrical reverence for life. As part of a concluding last paragraph to The Lovely and the Wild she wished that people would strive to be on a heightened awareness of natural changes: “… not for the sake of selfish pseudo-recreation in their midst {creations of millenia}, not for relief from man - made sordidness and artificial pressures, not just to gratify the need of mercenary exploitation and vain possession, but to obtain some deeper guiding comprehension of nature’s irremissible logic, of the intricacies of all its balanced systems.”
Fungi and algae take a lichen to each other Photo credit Bill Reynolds
Life is about cultivating our sense of wonder and helping others rediscover theirs.
Rob Walker’s book provides many tools to do just that emphasizing the urban environment with easy crossover applicability to whatever your interpretive space is. The Earthwalks book produced by Steve Van Matre and Associates, focuses on sensory awareness in the natural non-built environment with detailed descriptions of the mechanics on how to craft such a walk. Add them to your bookshelf.
Let’s follow up these practical tips with a bonus (we hope you consider it so) riff on interpretive philosophy, which was instigated by a little background digging about author Rob Walker and where he teaches. Side note: He was the originator of the word “murketing” as a blend of murky and marketing. He needed a way to explain the different promotional focus using buzz creation rather than direct advertising sales that Red Bull broke away with through their sponsored events approach.
Rob is on the faculty of the Products of Design MFA Program at the School of Visual Arts (SFA), in New York City. Looking into their mission and philosophy one sees how design and interpretation have so much in common. SFA sees the power of design as something:
Ø to fix problems,
Ø to create value,
Ø to reinvent businesses, and
Ø to address vital social and environmental challenges.
That fits really well with our view of interpretation, although we would exchange reinvent businesses with reinvent experiences. Their faculty motto seems to be “Designers don’t design things. They design consequences.” Interpreters design situations so people have interactions with the place they are visiting (i.e. consequences). Another parallel. Let’s follow this path a bit more.
The SFA considers the department itself to be a “product of design” because it responds nimbly and comprehensively to the critical questions around the role of objects, the impact of digitization, and centrality of justice in contemporary culture. Interpretive site teams if they stay relevant to their visitors also grapple with these critical questions.
They see designers as the connective tissue of their environments because:
Ø they translate between stakeholders,
Ø reframe problems,
Ø reveal opportunities,
Ø render the invisible visible, and
Ø champion change.
Similarity with the modern interpreter role, n’est ce-pas??
Our hope is that this blogpost about NOTICING has provided some joy in your life.
Questions for the comments section:
Do you have any thoughts to share on ways you have helped visitors to render the invisible visible (and in the process made someone’s day)?
Can you contribute some insights on how you would do this in a self-guided way at your site while working remotely?