Land + Sea + Humans
Through a simple exercise of association of different words with different ecosystems (land, sea, humans) I invited a group of colleagues to create a map of words using Venn diagrams. By doing this, we explored the boundaries between land, sea and humans. This exercise enabled me to generate interesting discussions by allowing the emergence of people’s differing perspectives on the connection between these boundaries. Some interesting conversations developed concerning perceptions of sanctuary or the sacred and how closely related we all perceive land, sea and humans.
Having a focus surrounding a particular landmark such as Hilbre proved to be an effective way to apply my theories towards our connection to land and sea and hear how different people associate and interlink different ecosystems.
Audio recordings of this session
The following are snippets of audio recordings I took during this mind-mapping session, capturing some key aspects of the discussions. I followed each audio with keywords, a brief outline of what the audio contains and questions I pose to inform my research.
Keywords: species, connection, ecosystem
This attendee highlights the sense of connection between species, each one has their own sense of connection.
How do these connections can be represented? How the individual sense of connection looks like?
Keywords: interconnected, boundaries, stories
This attendee addresses how the land, the sea and humans are interconnected. Each ecosystem (the land, the sea and humans) have stories to tell, by their existence itself but also in relation to one another. Which stories are told by the land, the sea, and humans? Do they share common stories?
Keywords: land, sea, line, boundaries, ownership
This attendee questions where are the boundaries within the sea. Boundaries can be easily be drawn on land but these lines are less clear in water. This brings an interesting question about ownership. Where do we draw the lines from what we own and what we don’t own?
Keywords: exchange, tide, vast, access
This attendee mentions the fact that a great amount of the oceans haven’t been accessed yet, due to their vastness. The tides play the role of exchanging, bringing to us what the oceans cover, or at least the elements closer to the surface. Which messages are brought by the ocean for us to unravel?
