Week two, we discussed ecology and storytelling. After I read the article about Irish fairytales and landscape, I noticed that stories represented the history and memory of a place. Stories being told by many generations contain different culture and ideas. Even in imaginative tales, stories illustrate culture and memories. Landscapes are like physical stories told by designers. Designers dig into the past history and stories to know better about the site and the place, and turn the invisible culture into a physical landscape. So while we are mapping, we should learn how to tell a story in our map. That is the connection between culture, landscape and audience.
I know a little story demonstrating how landscape carries culture. It is like a tale because this story sounds so mysterious. This was an elevated road built in Shanghai. One of the pillars under the road could not be stuck into the ground no matter what methods they used. In the absence of means, the construction team found an eminent monk to make spells on the pillar. The monk said they should draw 9 dragons on the pillar so that it could be stuck into the ground. Although some of the tea members did not believe that, they still followed the instruction of the monk. Then the mysterious thing happened, the pillar succeeded in sticking into the ground. Now we can still see the 9 dragons on the pillar.
When people see this pillar, they will think about the story and the time when technology was not so advanced so people tried to solve problems through magic. Landscape can also have this magic to bring people back to a specific time and memory.
