Interconnectedness with the natural world : a journey of moments and interactions

Interconnectedness with the Natural World: a journey of moments and interactions explores and responds to the human individual's relationship with the organic environment. This project examines those moments when the individual may have a sense of connection, of interconnection to the organic environment. This study explores times such as when a very human interaction with the natural environment occurs - running barefoot in the grass - and the sudden awareness of and awakening to their surrounds that transpires. The idea of the moment is integral to the research, and a creature that I have come to see as being a hybrid of both time and place. This moment that contains the individual and their experience of interconnection with their surrounds is one that has propelled the further study of the very subjective nature of human interactions with their surrounds. I examine the way in which time and place play their roles in these very personal and organic moments between the two protagonists. I explore and delve into the way these moments of interconnectedness with the organic environment contain so very much - the concept of time and place and experience and Self, but also the very physicality of these elements. It is this somewhat intangible and undefinable nature of time, place and experience that relates directly to that open-endedness of the moment, and reinforces the concept. In a similar way, the very subjective manner of the human experience of these elements is enveloped and encapsulated by the equally subjective nature of this moment of interconnectedness. My creative responses to these ideas take the form of both a visual and sound-based installation. Both components of the work remain very organic in response to the organic subject of my research. I focus heavily on utilising organic, recycled materials and sounds taken directly from the environment to respond to and reflect on these explorations of the subjective nature of the moment of interaction with the surrounding organic world. I have created a space where I endeavour to show the work in such a way that it invites the viewer to experience it, correlating directly to the idea of the subjective experience of the individual. The greatest importance of this research, visual, sound and theoretical has been to gain a greater understanding of and arrive at a realisation of the very organic yet intangible nature of this moment of interaction between the individual and the organic environment. I have endeavoured to arrive at a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the moment of experience that occurs between the two, the role of time, place and experience, and the sense of interconnectedness that arises.