Noise in the landscape

Disputing the visibility of mundane technological objects

Bibliographic Data

ID2391200
AuthorsM Fukushima (0000-0001-9120-9819, University of Tokyo, Japan, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume26
Issue1
Pages64-84
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183520970603
OpenAlexW3099590724
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited45

In recent years, a controversy has arisen in Japan regarding an ongoing landscape policy proposing to eliminate the forest of utility poles and electric wires that covers almost all urban and rural landscapes. The controversy is somewhat peculiar vis-à-vis the existing study of landscape, partly because of the utterly ubiquitous and non-monumental characteristics of the poles and partly because of the general apathy in public reaction to them. Drawing upon diverse academic sources, this interdisciplinary exploration unfolds a complex entanglement of tacit landscape ideas behind the controversy. The author discusses the effectiveness and limits of addressing both the substantial and visual aspects of the poles vis-à-vis the public and policy makers by using three conceptual frameworks: (1) 'erasure' in the landscape as palimpsest, (2) the dual aspects of 'noise', and (3) artialisation, in order to understand this mundane element of technological objects in the context of creating contemporary landscapes

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Geography · Sociology · Visibility · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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