Vital ground : a sculptural investigation of the perceptions of Rock Island Bend on the Franklin River, Tasmania

This research project is framed as a case study to investigate how an individual's perception, and hence understanding of a site, might be affected by engagement with art informed by the site in question. This process has involved exploring connections between how we encounter and experience an artwork (inspired by a site), and subsequently documenting how understanding and perception are altered once we experience the site itself. The project employs scientific cognitivism, and explores how processes of visual analysis influence our perception of a particular location. Rock Island Bend (RIB) is a site known to most Tasmanians only through Peter Dombrovskis' famous Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania, 1979 image. The understanding of this site, with its reputed beauty and value, is almost entirely defined by that one image for even when people visit RIB they tend to return with renewed versions of the original Dombrovskis image, rather than newly developed representations of the site. In their attempt to understand and engage with site, they do so based upon what they've learned, experienced and been taught; each viewer brings their life experiences and inherited culture to each aesthetic moment whether framed by a site or an artwork. But how do our lives, our personas, experiences, and nuances influence what, and how we see and understand, and how does that understanding vary over time?