Technology Available to Solve Landscape Problems— Session A: Descriptive Approaches Seeing Desert as Wilderness and as Landscape-An Exercise in Visual Thinking1

Based on the components and program of VRVA (Visual Resources Values Assessment), a behavioral history of the visitor's perception of the American desert is examined. Emphasis is placed upon contrasts between traditional eastern "garden-park" viewpoints and contemporary desert scenery experiences. Special attention is given to the influence of John Wesley Powell's writings and the art of Georgia O'Keeffe. The specific region examined is Canyonlands. l/ Presented at the National Conference on Applied Techniques for Analysis and Management of the Visual Resource, Incline Village, Nevada, April 23-25, 1979. 2/ Editor, Environmental Review; Professor of History, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pa. One of the most important new commitments of contemporary society has been toward environmental quality. Landscape planning, assessment and impact statements have become decisive aspects of environmental preservation, conservation and development, based on the influence of public opinion, special interest groups, government agencies and legal statutes. These new circumstances have also meant an enormous growth in the need for information, more or less precise, about landscape aesthetics, including the visual resource. But such reports have often been of poor quality or limited usefulness, based upon outdated, irrelevant, or excessively narrow data. Major historic preconceptions which control landscape values are rarely considered. Analysis of written descriptions, illustrations, paintings and photography are rarely given much credibility. Contemporary viewpoints of scenic landscape by the general public are played down for the sake of professional evaluations which may miss the mark entirely. One difficulty is that aesthetic and value information is difficult to quantify. Another difficulty is the lack of significant normative guidelines and hence a lack of pragmatically useful information. This is not the place to develop abstract theories of landscape values, or to review the extensive (and excellent) visual landscape assessment literature from England and the Continent. The task of this essay is to explore the essential historic, cultural, and social presuppositions of the modern traveller, tourist, or vacationer. The needs of permanent residents and the profit-motive of the businessman are another subject. Our attention is focussed on the visitor who experiences the desert, notably the Canyonlands region, as a temporary interlude intentionally different from his usual environs. The following outline seeks to organize complex visual subjects into a manageable and interpreted framework. Nevertheless, in this reduction the landscape-observer interaction must not be ignored. Nor can the immeasureable and often-subjective nature of values assessment be denied. This outline is proposed to encourage further disciplined enquiry, analysis, criticism and review in order to shape a viable program for a visual resources values assessment.