10
L. Le Dû-Blayo and O. Musard
five-page index. In a very learned approach to geography and vision, Denis Cosgrove
(2008) explores the vision of the land in history, according to the hemispheres, on
the ocean and even in cosmography, but does not break through the water’s surface.
Similarly, in the introduction to his summary on the landscape, Y. Luginbühl (2012)
touches upon the water’s surface in an ambiguous manner: “It—the landscape—thus
refers to contemplation and to a specifically terrestrial area excluding the sea, unless
the word land means the planet”.
Yet, social sciences have conceptual designs and methodological tools that are
quite capable of standing the test of underwater landscape analysis. This is a
new area of research that social and natural sciences must explore, as part of an
interdisciplinary approach.
1.4 Studying the Underwater Landscape
1.4.1 Which Reference Terminology for Which Landscape
Approach?
In this interdisciplinary approach to landscape, vocabularies intersect and complete or
contradict one another. Admittedly, the European Landscape Convention established
a definition of the landscape, providing a framework for all contracting states’ public
policies in respect thereof. However, firstly not all disciplines have acknowledged
landscape as being rooted in people’s perceptions and secondly, each discipline
retains its own methods, tools and descriptors. Furthermore, in the case of underwater
landscapes, or seascapes, the specific constraints exacerbate questions concerning
dialogue between disciplines.
Words are associated with images and the construction of representations of the
underwater world is a core aspect here. We individually assess the degree to which
such representations and images help to forge the collective construction of underwater seascapes, not solely by sharing a corpus of films or novels, but also by sharing
maps, block diagrams, sketches, sections and scientific charts.
To open up reflection as an introduction to this work, and without claiming to do
so completely, we can here suggest a correspondence between terms and concepts
that interlink and ultimately form a corpus to be shared in the approach to underwater
landscapes (Fig. 1.3).
The question of representations is no doubt one of the key aspects of an interdisciplinary approach to underwater landscapes: representations stemming directly from
the emotions that underwater landscapes arouse, developed within a framework of
personal and social filters; but also all representations, i.e. images, produced through
work on the underwater world and which, from a bathymetric chart to a film, via
a photograph of a protected site, help build a collective representation of underwater seascapes. Thus, permeability is high between representations of terrestrial
landscapes and those of the underwater world, because the same techniques (maps,
block diagrams, cross-sections, etc.) and very often the same vocabulary (plain, shelf,
L. Le Dû-Blayo and O. Musard
five-page index. In a very learned approach to geography and vision, Denis Cosgrove
(2008) explores the vision of the land in history, according to the hemispheres, on
the ocean and even in cosmography, but does not break through the water’s surface.
Similarly, in the introduction to his summary on the landscape, Y. Luginbühl (2012)
touches upon the water’s surface in an ambiguous manner: “It—the landscape—thus
refers to contemplation and to a specifically terrestrial area excluding the sea, unless
the word land means the planet”.
Yet, social sciences have conceptual designs and methodological tools that are
quite capable of standing the test of underwater landscape analysis. This is a
new area of research that social and natural sciences must explore, as part of an
interdisciplinary approach.
1.4 Studying the Underwater Landscape
1.4.1 Which Reference Terminology for Which Landscape
Approach?
In this interdisciplinary approach to landscape, vocabularies intersect and complete or
contradict one another. Admittedly, the European Landscape Convention established
a definition of the landscape, providing a framework for all contracting states’ public
policies in respect thereof. However, firstly not all disciplines have acknowledged
landscape as being rooted in people’s perceptions and secondly, each discipline
retains its own methods, tools and descriptors. Furthermore, in the case of underwater
landscapes, or seascapes, the specific constraints exacerbate questions concerning
dialogue between disciplines.
Words are associated with images and the construction of representations of the
underwater world is a core aspect here. We individually assess the degree to which
such representations and images help to forge the collective construction of underwater seascapes, not solely by sharing a corpus of films or novels, but also by sharing
maps, block diagrams, sketches, sections and scientific charts.
To open up reflection as an introduction to this work, and without claiming to do
so completely, we can here suggest a correspondence between terms and concepts
that interlink and ultimately form a corpus to be shared in the approach to underwater
landscapes (Fig. 1.3).
The question of representations is no doubt one of the key aspects of an interdisciplinary approach to underwater landscapes: representations stemming directly from
the emotions that underwater landscapes arouse, developed within a framework of
personal and social filters; but also all representations, i.e. images, produced through
work on the underwater world and which, from a bathymetric chart to a film, via
a photograph of a protected site, help build a collective representation of underwater seascapes. Thus, permeability is high between representations of terrestrial
landscapes and those of the underwater world, because the same techniques (maps,
block diagrams, cross-sections, etc.) and very often the same vocabulary (plain, shelf,