Multisensory Landscapes : Theories and Methods

This book provides a broad view on multisensory landscapes from multiple perspectives.

It includes theoretical perspectives as well as case studies. Different theoretical perspectives on landscape emerging from research in the last decades also require a differentiated approach to landscape phenomena, going beyond the visual. For example, a social constructivist approach to the social world foregrounds the processes of negotiating social ‚realities‘. This is not limited to visual aspects, and is not based on a clear physical measurability with an accompanying (purely quantitative) recording. A phenomenological approach, for example, places the synesthetic experience of landscape at the core of interest. This approach to the topic of multisensory via ‚landscape‘ is obvious for several reasons. Firstly, landscape is created (from a constructivist perspective) through the synthesis of sensory impressions on the basis of social patterns of interpretation and evaluation. Secondly, communication about ‚landscape‘ is also accessible to people who do not have any ‚expertlike special knowledge‘ in this regard. Thirdly, landscape as a changing concept is not only a concept of landscape but also of landscape itself. Fourthly, landscape as a changeable concept is particularly suitable for conceptually framing the highly fleeting non-visual stimuli.

Lara Koegst is a scientific employee at the working group for urban and regional development at the University of Tübingen.

Dr. Dr. Olaf Kühne is a professor of urban and regional development at the University of Tübingen.

Dr. Dennis Edler is a senior lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum Department of Geography, with teaching and research focus on Cartography and Geographic Information Science.