Out of Doors: enwi'r gwyllt = naming the wild... & some: names

Showing posts with label names. Show all posts

9.9.15

Senecio jacobaea

image in collaboration with Paul Hetherington

enwi'r gwyllt - naming the wild

What happens when we name things?

How does it change our experience of those “things”? We see, we learn the name [either by reading or having someone tell us], we write the name and we are back into the visual – a code to translate back into the aural.

How can naming the plants change our experience of a place? How do names of plants affect how we see each different sort of plant? How much can names tell us about plants and their use and what people in the past thought of them?

Part of the life of the plant is made through photosynthesis, some plants are phototoxic or have particular photonastic attributes. Most of the inhabitants [plants, fungi, animals] of this planet are photosensitive; I am particularly so. This inspires me to use light as a basic recording material: camera-less photographic techniques such as cyanotypes and lumen prints.

Collecting plant names in English and the Brythonic languages is an ongoing project.

I lived close to Roath Park in the mid-1980s and the late 1990s.