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Abstract
This thesis questions the contemporary landscape an inherently layered term through interaction with historic perceptions artistic visualisations and theoretical investigations, which are inherently culturally located and time specific. The landscape, when considered in a contemporary context, applies to an ever increasing breadth of approaches to art making practice today. Contemporary conceptual engagement with the landscape is dealt with throughout this thesis by employing the International Situationists psychogeopgraphic approach to spatial exploration; the dérive. A derive refers to a subversive act of exploration, on foot, which consciously mediates normalised modes of spatial interaction. In the context of this thesis this concept is expanded to encompass the manner in which information is encountered as one traverses both physical, theoretical and virtual reality.
As such the thesis is structured in an experimental manner so as to reflect the experimentally based practice it encompasses. An expanded Venn diagrammatic is employed to visualize the manner in which various elements of the world — from theoretical physics redefining reality to artistic practice to literary mapping fable — have contributed to a multifaceted understanding of the concept of the landscape genre today. The diagram visualises this investigation through a central core of artistic practice around which the information is interacted with through the three main phases of memory, space and mapping. The contemporary landscapes exploration is outlined as an evolving frame-work through which Lett’s conceptual artistic practice has evolved.
Lett’s practice draws upon various forms of topographical data collection — including memory, GPS and auditory recording — as the catalyst for artwork produced. The information encountered is positioned as occurring at first perceptually then conceptually layered within memory over time. Virtual mapping and physical travel within global space are positioned as triggers for our conceptually layered notion of the contemporary landscape in conjunction with theoretical physics propositions on multidimensional space, parallel realities and a pervasive Higgs field. The parts of information encountered within the dérive through this paper all inform Lett’s artistic practice in which the perceptually encountered contemporary landscape now exists as an ambiguous aesthetic space in a constant state of flux.