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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
EDUCATIONAL FUTURES
Post-Digital, Post-Internet
Art and Education
The Future is All-Over
Edited by
Kevin Tavin · Gila Kolb · Juuso Tervo
Palgrave Studies in Educational Futures
Series Editor
jan jagodzinski, Department of Secondary Education,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
The series Educational Futures would be a call on all aspects of education, not
only specific subject specialist, but policy makers, religious education leaders,
curriculum theorists, and those involved in shaping the educational imagination
through its foundations and both psychoanalytical and psychological investments
with youth to address this extraordinary precarity and anxiety that is continually
rising as things do not get better but worsen. A global de-territorialization is
taking place, and new voices and visions need to be seen and heard. The series
would address the following questions and concerns. The three key signifiers of
the book series title address this state of risk and emergency:
Post-Digital,
Post-Internet Art
and Education
The Future is All-Over
Editors
Kevin Tavin Gila Kolb
Department of Art Schwyz University of Teacher
Aalto University Education
Espoo, Finland Goldau, Switzerland
Berne University of the Arts
Juuso Tervo
Bern, Switzerland
Department of Art
Aalto University
Espoo, Finland
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021. This book is an open access
publication.
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits
use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material
is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain
permission directly from the copyright holder.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgments
The editors of this book wish to thank all the contributors and the
community that supported this project, especially the authors whose
continuous work and valuable feedback made this book possible. We also
wish to thank the artists, filmmakers, galleries, and students for providing
their images. A special thank you goes to Nora Sternfeld, who made this
collaboration possible by bringing together the editors well before the
book project was envisaged.
v
Praise for Post-Digital, Post-Internet
Art and Education
“Be prepared to be challenged about the internet being ‘all over’; perme-
ating culture and gaming our social communication. The ideas in this
book are ripe for art educators who thrive on the ways our hearts beat
vii
viii PRAISE FOR POST-DIGITAL, POST-INTERNET ART AND EDUCATION
faster and critical pedagogical ideas flow while at the same time… our
minds are literally blown!”
—Pamela G. Taylor, Professor Emeritus VCUarts, Virginia
Commonwealth University, USA
Contents
ix
x CONTENTS
Index 299
Notes on Contributors
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xxi
xxii LIST OF FIGURES
‘How big is the internet?’ asks an anonymous user in Jodel.1 Reading the
question on the display of a smartphone, amused by the presumed un-
answerability of the question, one scrolls through the answers of other
users: ‘Without the porn pages, it would fit on a CD’ or ‘324 bathtubs.’
Since the app does not show this dialogue for longer than 24 hours,
one takes a screenshot with a swift, orchestrated movement involving
the thumb and the index finger. The image hovers briefly over the home
screen only to reappear in the ‘My Pictures’ folder. As thumbs continue
their semi-automated dance on the surface of the phone, this found object
G. Kolb
Schwyz University of Teacher Education, Goldau & Berne University of the
Arts, Goldau, Switzerland
e-mail: gila.kolb@phsz.ch
J. Tervo
Department of Art, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
e-mail: juuso.tervo@aalto.fi
K. Tavin (B)
Department of Art, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
e-mail: kevin.tavin@aalto.fi
with minimal tactile activity with a thumb, but strictly speaking, finger-
tips touched the glass of a minicomputer, and not, as was the case a few
years ago, pressing down on plastic buttons. Michel Serres described users
who take the operation of the devices for granted and explore the world
with it as “thumbelina and tom thumb [Petite Poucette]” (Serres, 2014).
According to Serres, however, they are not only distinguished by their
ability to operate devices with their thumbs. He notes that they do not
share the same concepts of spaces and time.
It is not only the practices of the different technologies connected
with the internet that are constantly changing, but also the individuals
and groups (and objects) that practice with them. The same device, and
even the same apps2 can be, and is, used very differently by different
people as actors and nonhuman actors, and its use is also bound to peer
groups. One could argue, as do many of the authors in this book, that
humans (also including those who do not have a smartphone, who use
it mainly to make phone calls by holding it to their ear, or by using it
with their index finger) are in the middle of a social, political, and tech-
nological shift in which digitality and the internet play a significant role.
Yet, while this shift also affects how art education is practiced and under-
stood, the global circulation of digital images and their social and political
effects are not reducible to a technological apparatus called ‘the Internet.’
Rather, the shifting landscape of both human and nonhuman activities
produces endless social and material entanglements that have overlapping,
even conflicting consequences for art education. Indeed, in his chapter in
this book, Knochel argues that art education of the future might not be
limited to focusing on the Internet or even considerations of producing
and consuming media, but to question the capacities of data structures,
network formations, and hardware configurations.
At present, from our perspective, it is no longer a question of getting
somewhere on the Internet, but of navigating with and through it, and it
navigating us. This may sometimes seem magical and sometimes lead to
astonishment, or what jagodzinski in his chapter calls sensations, affects,
and percepts as peer-generated buzz occurs, a neurosynaptic chemical
rush. As Klein, in her essay asks us to consider: Which fantasies and desires
are inscribed in technologies and which ones are they in turn producing?
For example, with the Sky Guide app, one can see stars under your feet
(through the Earth, so to speak), or a Pokémon sits on the kitchen table
in the augmented reality version of the app. While this amazement might
eventually give away to everyday use and habit—eventually forgotten, or
4 G. KOLB ET AL.
move on to other trends and scenes. For those who see art educators
always lagging behind the artworld, this seeming awkwardness might be
self-explanatory: when the so-called real work of art is done, art educators
and mediators may focus on so-called beating the dead horse as they so
often are claimed to do.
However, this book is not meant to be a claim for an entrepreneurial
timeliness of the post-internet for art and education any more than a
condescending history of a phenomenon. While the post-internet as a
catchphrase used in the artworld certainly offers an important point of
reference for the discussions at hand, the fact is that the world in which
the Internet, as well as digitality in general, have become a ‘state of mind’
is a world in which art teachers, educators, curators, and mediators (i.e.,
not only artists) also live and work, and have been for some time now. Yet,
since neither the world nor the Internet is simply two tabulae rasae for
human activities to occur, but historically, socially, and politically layered
and intricately entangled messes of local and global issues and agencies,
this state of mind manifests itself quite differently in the various contexts
and traditions of art and education.
Hence, instead of promoting a clearly delineated approach to art and
education in these post-internet, post-digital times, one of the guiding
ideas behind this book has been to gather locally and historically contin-
gent practices and articulations with and through the post-digital and the
post-internet. Combining different contexts and different aims, not to
mention different styles of writing (i.e., not only the sense of writing but
also how one spells out the term post or Post, or Post-, etc.), this book
aims to challenge fixed narratives and field-specific ownership of these
terms, and explore their potentials as well as limitations when discussing
art and education today, and indeed in the future.
This book gathers perspectives on post-digital and post-internet art
and education from teachers, educators, theorists, artists, and curators
based in Northern Europe and North America. This means that the book
addresses the Internet and digitality mainly as they are used and under-
stood in the so-called global North. As Klein and Smith point out in their
respective chapters, limiting oneself only to this perspective runs the risk
of reproducing a Eurocentric history of art, education, and technology
that neglects its own uses and abuses of power. If, indeed, the ‘Internet
state of mind’ has really changed the world in which artists, educators,
and curators work and live, it is important to ask, who frames this world
and its change, how, and what kind of future(s) this change is expected
6 G. KOLB ET AL.
and allow the readers to draw their own conclusions about what these
terms entail.
We wanted the concepts to be interpreted by the readers, depending
on their discursive and performative context, whether they view them as
controversial, fragmented, or constantly transmuting. Like Schmidt, in
her chapter, we resist the idea that the term ‘post’ refers to something
that always follows something older (although it does owe a debt of some
kind), or always points to something new. Instead, we see the prefix ‘post’
pointing to an entanglement between continuity and discontinuity, where
the now delineates a present that is not, prima facie, new. Instead, the
post-ness of the present, whether referring to digital or art, may offer a
productive critique of both a future-oriented logic that conflates historical
progression with a constant production of the new, and an inquiry into
how to actualize its potentiality (Tavin & Tervo, 2018). Instead, in this
book, we attempt to follow Bridle’s (2012) idea that post-internet and
post-digital
is not a space (notional, cyber or otherwise) and it’s not time (while it is
embedded in it at an odd angle) it is some other kind of dimension entirely
[sic]. BUT meaning is emergent in the network, it is the apophatic silence
at the heart of everything, that-which-can-be- pointed-to … an attempt to
do, maybe, possibly, contingently, to point at these things and go but what
does it mean? (para 35–36)
Pedagogical Observations,
Suggestions, and Teaching Practices
This goes to the digital immigrants: The dominant culture of Next Art
Education is the culture of the digital natives. It is a culture that is
emerging in this very moment. We do not have any experience here.
(Meyer, 2014, para 6)
When Torsten Meyer wrote these lines as part of “Next Art Education. 9
Essential Theses,” the iPhone 5 was new. Since then, new digital cultures
have emerged as well as new technology. Following up the nine essential
theses that Meyer presented back then, we have to accept the ‘internet
state of mind.’ In 2020, we already reached the ‘post-digital state of
mind’. We (as educators, researchers, and so on) should deal with it, as
one currently popular meme format has it. But what does this exactly
10 G. KOLB ET AL.
mean? The research group, Post Internet Arts Education research, initi-
ated by Torsten Meyer at the University of Cologne has been researching
and working on digital and post-digital art education since 2015 and,
therefore, a major contribution to basic research on post-internet art and
post-digital culture in this book stems from that research group. Focusing
on the changed conditions for art education and cultural media education
in the domain of ‘Internet state of mind,’ this group brought together
art, media, and cultural studies, raised research and pedagogical ques-
tions, and created a transdisciplinary context for research and teaching.
However, until this book, most of the available publications from the
members of the group were in German, for example, Eschment et al.
(2020), Klein and Noll (2019), Meyer and Jörissen (2014).
Apart from those publications in German, some members of the
research group, in 2017, developed MYOW—Workbook Arts Education
(Klein et al., 2020), an Open Educational Resources (OER) platform
for innovative concepts of art education, gallery education, and cultural
media education with special emphasis on current media culture(s) and
post-internet art. In this OER, practical concepts of participants in the
field of art and cultural education publish their teaching methods in order
to address art teachers, cultural educators, and practitioners of cultural
media education. Considered as a resource and action-based research,
different agents of art education cooperated, developed, and made avail-
able innovative concepts of art lessons and cultural media education in
the context of digitalization. With this outreach platform, other teachers
were invited to use the methods, reflect on them and participate as well.
In the post-internet, post-digital age, it makes total sense that this is how
a ‘workbook’ for digital art education works.
One might argue that different post-digital perceptions and usage have
something to do with different generations. In a sense, the post-digital
is not new—it just works differently for different people. As Tomi Slotte
Dufva demonstrates in his chapter with the exercise ‘A week in hell,’ when
students are asked to use different digital tools and software than they
have been accustomed to, it becomes clear how diverse the use of tech-
nology and software is and yet at the same time conservative as well. As
soon as we are asked to shift slightly our familiar paths in the digital world,
often tools and software become nearly unusable or useless (for example,
might you imagine shifting your keyboard from a Windows system to
Mac, or vice versa?).
1 INTRODUCTION: IT’S ALL OVER! POST-DIGITAL … 11
However, it is not only about the things we are familiar with or used to
using. The post-internet state of mind in education mobilizes a reflection
on how power relations can be addressed or commented on—be it with
humor or subversion. One example would be memes, which are widely
circulating combinations of images (still or moving) and texts. Memes are
not only easy to reproduce and distribute, but just as easy to produce by
oneself. Memes offer an ingenious platform for commenting on everyday
things and events, often in a humorous way. But memes are not only
used by young people, and, of course, not just for fun. They are also
used for overt political purposes including specific right-wing propaganda
(Lingg & Schmidt, 2020). In addition, there are activist meme accounts
that consciously use memes to convey feminist, anti-racist, intersectional,
and other progressive content. What we can learn from memes is that
a form of communication first used by so-called internet nerds became
mainstream and political in a very short period of time, and as Schütze
(2020) points out, part of national politics in the United States.
In addition to a post-internet and post-digital state of mind, there is
another global shift: Covid-19. During this global pandemic, that started
in early 2020, followed by national lockdowns in most countries in the
global north, education began to move to ‘online’ only. This significant
shift, especially for art education, sparked various reactions. For example,
there was the denial of the possibility to teach any so-called creative
design activities online. In addition, there was a great need to collect and
share information on methods, didactic concepts, Open Access Databases,
Open Education Resources, and Open Source Software that students
could connect to and afford. There were strategies to collect this infor-
mation in publicly accessible documents, where main topics of digital
art education and best practice examples were continuously linked and
shared, e.g., by Bali and Zamora (2020), Syjuco (2020), Kolb (2020),
and Shared Campus (2020). While this practice existed before Covid-19,
the global pandemic seemed to help to collect and increase the diversity
of media in digital teaching and facilitate the entry, or changeover, to
digital teaching formats through a variety of examples—and even to help
organize people. As Kolb points out in her chapter, digital art teaching is
possible and not second best, even if, and especially because, the body is
not involved in the same way than in an analogue setting. Therefore, all
the authors in this book, one way or another, believe digital art teaching
needs rethinking. To take it even further, this process might even lead to
unlearning in educational futures.
12 G. KOLB ET AL.
not know which outcome an educational situation will have, they must
improvise. The essay focuses on this approach in the classroom, which
denies classical power structures and the need for a dominant leadership
of the teacher.
The next essay in this section is by Tomi Slotte Dufva, Creative
Coding as Compost(ing). Slotte Dufva focuses on creative coding prac-
tices within a university-level art education context. Drawing from earlier
literature and combining it with current research, his essay takes a feminist
approach to creative coding and examines the importance and possibili-
ties of different code-related art educational practices in the post-digital
world(ing)s. Slotte Dufva’s essay discusses how the post-digital takes
place by using compost as a metaphor for art education practices. More
specifically, this essay introduces three examples from courses taught at
Aalto University that together form the digital compost: humus, care,
and waste. Slotte Dufva’s chapter closes with the discussion on further
feminist approaches within post-digital within art education.
The next text is Helena Björk’s essay, Post-Internet Verfremdung . Her
work also discusses curricula. Björk presents a school assignment as a
possible approach to online visual culture, though creating Instagram
fiction. Björk argues that the ease of uploading images on Instagram has
meant that a whole generation grows up paying closer attention to visual
language. At the same time, Instagram and other social media have come
to dominate visual culture to the extent that we might consider how to
unlearn what they may have taught us. In her essay, the internet is seen
not only as a vital part of visual culture but also as a site of learning. When
students create Instagram fiction, Björk argues, we can understand how
social media operate both visually and socially. Parody and estrangement,
or the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt , are examples offered in this essay to
examine this phenomenon, and possibly activate critical thinking.
To conclude this introduction, we raise the issue of generational shifts.
For example, Meyer (2020) explains that when he asked his students and
also his own children (of the same age) to communicate via email (as the
editors and authors did when putting this book together), they “tell me
clearly: I only use email when I need to communicate with old people.
Boom” (para 10). According to this logic, the book you hold in your
hands is already outdated since the moment it was printed, created as a
PDF, or made ready for downloading on some device to read. Of course,
that does not mean that there are not many good reasons to read it, in
whatever manner. Similar to schooling, just because is often based on a
1 INTRODUCTION: IT’S ALL OVER! POST-DIGITAL … 21
system that passes on knowledge rather than one that creates knowledge,
or challenges the very notion of knowledge, it doesn’t have to stay that
way.
The theoretical work and pedagogical examples in this book might help
you to deal with a post digital state of mind. It encourages readers to shift
ideas of criticality when teaching art in the post-digital and post-internet
era, and to broaden the understanding of teaching and learning beyond
one’s own generational logics. The editors and authors of this book want
to reach you, even if you see this book it in the same way Meyer’s students
see emails, with our desire hope that you will make something with and
from it. We hope that it not only meets new futures, but also helps to
create them, again and again, even if, and especially because ‘it’s all-over.’
Notes
1. On the app Jodel, texts and pictures can be published, read and commented
regionally and anonymously.
2. See: Michael Seemann, Michael Krell (2017) Digital Tribalism—The Real
Story About Fake News. https://www.ctrl-verlust.net/digital-tribalism-
the-real-story-about-fake-news/.
References
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Soziologische Schriften I (pp. 93–121). Suhrkamp.
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und Kunsttheorie, H. 2, pp. 2–14.
Bali, M., & Zamora, M. (2020). Crowdsourcing teaching online with care.
https://bit.ly/onlinewithcare.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the
entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham University Press.
Bridle, J. (2012, March 15). #sxaesthetic. https://booktwo.org/notebook/sxa
esthetic/.
Bridle, J. (2013). The new aesthetic and its politics. https://booktwo.org/not
ebook/new-aesthetic-politics/.
Bush, V. (1945, July). As we may think. Atlantic Monthly, 176, 101–108.
Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Blackwell.
Deleuze, G. (2001). Pure immanence: Essays on life (A. Boyman, Trans.). Zone
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Stiegler, B. (2018). The neganthropocene (D. Ross, Ed. & Trans.). Open
Humanities Press.
Syjuco, S. (2020). PUBLIC PEDAGOGY: Shared syllabi from college art teachers,
for college art teachers. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11HEFU
hXVDG6Bil9dhdr6-I7C19j6ndORvNz8loH4ndQ/edit#gid=0.
Tavin, K., & Tervo, J. (2018). How soon is now? Post-conditions in art
education. Studies in Art Education, 59(4), 282–296.
Trecartin, R. (Writer & Director). (2010). Re’Search Wait’S [Video]. United
States.
Virilio, P. (2000). The information bomb (C. Turner, Trans.). London: Verso.
Vierkant, A. (2010). The image object post-Internet. https://jstchillin.org/artie/
pdf/The_Image_Object_Post-Internet_us.pdf.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the
chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line
to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons
license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds
the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder.
PART I
There is a spot which I used to visit some years ago, that seemed to
me one of the most enchanting of natural scenes. It was a level plain
of about ten acres, surrounded by a narrow stream that was fed by a
steep ridge forming a sort of amphitheatre round more than half its
circumference. The ridge was a declivity of near a hundred feet in
height, and so steep that you could climb it only by taking hold of the
trees and bushes that covered it. The whole surface consisted of a
thin stratum of soil deposited upon a slaty rock; but the growth of
trees upon this slope was beautiful and immense, and the water that
was constantly trickling from a thousand fountains kept the ground
all the year green with mosses and ferns, and gay with many varieties
of flowers. The soil was so rich in the meadow enclosed by this ridge,
and annually fertilized by the débris washed from the hills, that the
proprietor every summer filled his barns with hay, which was
obtained from it without any cultivation.
I revisited this spot a few years since, after a long period of
absence. A new owner, “a man of progress and enterprise,” had felled
the trees that grew so beautifully on the steep sides of this elevation,
and valley and hill have become a dreary and unprofitable waste. The
thin soil that sustained the forest, no longer protected by the trees
and their undergrowth, has been washed down into the valley,
leaving nothing but a bald, rocky surface, whose hideousness is
scarcely relieved by a few straggling vines. The valley is also ruined;
for the inundations to which it is subject after any copious rain
destroy every crop that is planted upon it, and render it
impracticable for tillage. It is covered with sand heaps; the little
stream that glided round it, fringed with azaleas and wild roses, has
disappeared, and the land is reduced to a barren pasture.
The general practice of the pioneers of civilization on this
continent was to cut down the wood chiefly from the uplands and the
lower slopes of the hills and mountains. They cleared those tracts
which were most valuable for immediate use and cultivation.
Necessity led them to pursue the very course required by the laws of
nature for improving the soil and climate. The first clearings were
made chiefly for purposes of agriculture; and as every farm was
surrounded by a rampart of woods, it was sheltered from the force of
the winds and pleasantly open to the sun. But when men began to fell
the woods to supply the demands of towns and cities for fuel and
lumber, these clearings were gradually deprived of their shelter, by
levelling the surrounding forest and opening the country to the
winds from every quarter. But the clearing of the wood from the
plains, while it has rendered the climate more unstable, has not been
the cause of inundations or the diminution of streams. This evil has
been produced by clearing the mountains and lesser elevations
having steep or rocky sides; and if this destructive work is not
checked by legislation or by the wisdom of the people, plains and
valleys now green and fertile will become profitless for tillage or
pasture, and the advantages we shall have sacrificed will be
irretrievable in the lifetime of a single generation. The same
indiscriminate felling of woods has rendered many a once fertile
region in Europe barren and uninhabitable, equally among the cold
mountains of Norway and the sunny plains of Brittany.
Our climate suffers more than formerly from summer droughts.
Many ancient streams have entirely disappeared, and a still greater
number are dry in summer. Boussingault mentions a fact that clearly
illustrates the condition to which we may be exposed in thousands of
locations on this continent. In the island of Ascension there was a
beautiful spring, situated at the foot of a mountain which was
covered with wood. By degrees the spring became less copious, and
at length failed. While its waters were annually diminishing in bulk,
the mountain had been gradually cleared of its forest. The
disappearance of the spring was attributed to the clearing. The
mountain was again planted, and as the new growth of wood
increased, the spring reappeared, and finally attained its original
fulness. More to be dreaded than drought, and produced by the same
cause,—the clearing of steep declivities of their wood,—are the
excessive inundations to which all parts of the country are subject.
If it were in the power of man to dispose his woods and tillage in
the most advantageous manner, he might not only produce an
important amelioration of the general climate, but he might diminish
the frequency and severity both of droughts and inundations, and
preserve the general fulness of streams. If every man were to pursue
that course which would protect his own grounds from these evils, it
would be sufficient to bring about this beneficent result. If each
owner of land would keep all his hills and declivities, and all slopes
that contain only a thin deposit of soil or a quarry, covered with
forest, he would lessen his local inundations from vernal thaws and
summer rains. Such a covering of wood tends to equalize the
moisture that is distributed over the land, causing it, when showered
upon the hills, to be retained by the mechanical action of the trees
and their undergrowth of shrubs and herbaceous plants, and by the
spongy surface of the soil underneath them, made porous by mosses,
decayed leaves, and other débris, so that the plains and valleys have
a moderate oozing supply of moisture for a long time after every
shower. Without this covering, the water when precipitated upon the
slopes, would immediately rush down over an unprotected surface in
torrents upon the space below.
Every one has witnessed the effects of clearing the woods and
other vegetation from moderate declivities in his own neighborhood.
He has observed how rapidly a valley is inundated by heavy showers,
if the rising grounds that form its basin are bare of trees and planted
with the farmer’s crops. Even grass alone serves to check the rapidity
with which the water finds its way to the bottom of the slope. Let it
be covered with bushes and vines, and the water flows with a speed
still more diminished. Let this shrubbery grow into a forest, and the
valley would never be inundated except by a long-continued and
flooding rain. Woods and their undergrowth are indeed the only
barriers against frequent and sudden inundations, and the only
means in the economy of nature for preserving an equal fulness of
streams during all seasons of the year.
At first thought, it may seem strange that the clearing of forests
should be equally the cause both of drought and inundations; but
these apparently incompatible facts are easily explained by
considering the different effects produced by woods standing in
different situations. An excess of moisture in the valleys comes from
the drainage of the hills, and the same conditions that will cause
them to be dried up at certain times will cause them to be flooded at
others. Nature’s design seems to be to preserve a constant moderate
fulness of streams and standing water. This purpose she
accomplishes by clothing the general surface of the country with
wood. When man disturbs this arrangement, he may produce evil
consequences which he had never anticipated. We are not, however,
to conclude that we may not improve the soil and climate by
changing the original condition of this wooded surface. The clearing
of the forest may be reduced to a science whose laws are as sure and
unexceptionable as those of mechanics and hydraulics. Though it has
not gained much attention from the public mind, it is well
understood by the learned who have made this branch of vegetable
meteorology their special study. Our danger lies in neglecting to
apply these laws to operations in the forest, and in preferring to
obtain certain immediate commercial advantages, at the risk of
inflicting evils of incalculable extent upon a coming generation.
THE LINDEN-TREE.
While Nature, in the forms of trees, in the color of their foliage and
the gracefulness of their spray, has displayed a great variety of
outline and tinting, and provided a constant entertainment for the
sight, she has increased their attractions by endowing them with a
different susceptibility to motion from the action of the winds. In
their motions we perceive no less variety than in their forms. The
different species differ like animals; some being graceful and easy,
others stiff and awkward; some calm and intrepid, others nervous
and easily agitated. Perhaps with stricter analogy we might compare
them to human beings; for we find trees that represent the man of
quiet and dignified deportment, also the man of excited manners and
rapid gesticulations. Some trees, like the fir, having stiff branches
and foliage, move awkwardly backward and forward in the wind,
without any separate motions of their leaves. While we admire the
symmetrical and stately forms of such trees, we are reminded of men
who present a noble personal appearance, accompanied with
ungainly manners.
Some trees, having stiff branches with flexible leaves, do not bend
to a moderate breeze, but their foliage readily yields to the motion of
the wind. This habit is observed in the oak and the ash, in all trees
that have a pendulous foliage and upright or horizontal branches.
The poplars possess this habit in a remarkable degree, and it is
proverbial in the aspen. It is also conspicuous in the common pear-
tree and in the small white birch. Other trees, like the American elm,
wave their branches gracefully, with but little apparent motion of
their leaves. We observe the same habit in the weeping willow, and
indeed in all trees with a long and flexible spray. The wind produces
by its action on these a general sweeping movement without any
rustle. It is easy to observe, when walking in a grove, that the only
graceful motions come from trees with drooping branches, because
these alone are long and slender.
The very rapid motion of the leaves of the aspen has given origin to
some remarkable superstitions. The Highlanders of Scotland believe
the wood of this tree to be that of which the holy cross was made, and
that its leaves are consequently never allowed to rest. Impressed with
the awfulness of the tragedy of the crucifixion, they are constantly
indicating to the winds the terrors that agitate them. The small white
birch displays considerable of the same motion of the leaves; but we
take little notice of it, because they are softer and produce less of a
rustling sound. The flickering lights and shadows observed when
walking under these trees, on a bright noonday, have always been
admired. All these habits awaken our interest in trees and other
plants by assimilating them to animated things.
Much of the beauty of the silver poplar comes from its glittering
lights, when it presents the green upper surface of its foliage,
alternating rapidly with the white silvery surface beneath. This we
may readily perceive even in cloudy weather, but in the bright
sunshine the contrasts are very brilliant. In all trees, however, we
observe this glittering beauty of motion in the sunshine. The under
part of leaves being less glossy than the upper part, there is in the
assemblage the same tremulous lustre that appears on the rippled
surface of a lake by moonlight.
We observe occasionally other motions which I have not described,
such as the uniform bending of the whole tree. In a strong current of
wind, tall and slender trees especially attract our attention by
bending over uniformly like a plume. This habit is often seen in the
white birch, a tree that in its usual assemblages takes a plumelike
form. When a whole grove of white birches is seen thus bending over
in one direction from the action of a brisk wind, they seem like a
procession of living forms. In a storm we watch with peculiar interest
the bending forms of certain tall elms, such as we often see in
clearings, with their heads bowed down almost to the ground by the
force of the tempest. It is only the waves of the ocean and the tossing
of its billows that can afford us so vivid an impression of the
sublimity of a tempest as the violent swaying of a forest and the
roaring of the winds among the lofty tree-tops.
The motions of an assemblage of trees cannot be observed except
from a stand that permits us to look down upon the surface formed
by their summits. We should then perceive that pines and firs, with
all the stiffness of their branches, display a great deal of undulating
motion. These undulations or wavy movements are particularly
graceful in a grove of hemlocks, when they are densely assembled
without being crowded. It is remarkable that one of the most graceful
of trees belongs to a family which are distinguished by their stiffness
and formality. The hemlock, unlike other firs and spruces, has a very
flexible spray, with leaves also slightly movable, which are constantly
sparkling when agitated by the wind. If we look down from an
opposite point, considerably elevated, upon a grove of hemlocks
when they are exposed to brisk currents of wind, they display a
peculiar undulating movement of the branches and foliage, made
more apparent by the glitter of their leaves.
The surface of any assemblage of trees when in motion bears a
close resemblance to the waves of the sea. But hemlocks represent its
undulations when greatly agitated, without any broken lines upon its
surface. Other firs display in their motions harsher angles and a
somewhat broken surface of the waves. We see the tops of these trees
and their extreme branches awkwardly swaying backwards and
forwards, and forming a surface like that of the sea when it is broken
by tumultuous waves of a moderate height. The one suggests the idea
of tumult and contention; the other, that of life and motion
combined with serenity and peace.
THE TULIP-TREE.
I have not much faith in the science of ignorant men; for the
foundations of all knowledge are laid in books; and those only who
have read and studied much can possess any considerable store of
wisdom. But there are philosophers among laboring swains, whose
quaint observations and solutions of nature’s problems are
sometimes worthy of record. With these men of untutored genius I
have had considerable intercourse, and hence I oftener quote them
than the learned and distinguished, whom I have rarely met. The
ignorant, from want of knowledge, are always theorists; but genius
affords its possessor, how small soever his acquisitions, some
glimpses of truth which may be entirely hidden from the mere
pedant in science. My philosophic friend, a man of genius born to the
plough, entertained a theory in regard to the atmosphere, which,
though not strictly philosophical, is so ingenious and suggestive that
I have thought an account of it a good introduction to this essay.
My friend, when explaining his views, alluded to the well-known
fact that plants growing in an aquarium keep the water supplied with
atmospheric air—not with simple oxygen, but with oxygen chemically
combined with nitrogen—by some vital process that takes place in
the leaves of plants. As the lungs of animals decompose the air which
they inspire, and breathe out carbonic-acid gas, plants in their turn
decompose this deleterious gas, and breathe out pure atmospheric
air. His theory is that the atmosphere is entirely the product of
vegetation, and that nature has no other means of composing it; that
it is not simply a chemical, but a vital product; and that its
production, like its preservation, depends entirely on plants, and
would be impossible without their agency. But as all plants united
are not equal in bulk to the trees, it may be truly averred that any