Blog 5 - Underwater statues

Man made things fall in the grey area in terms of appreciating nature. Since it is man made can it not be beautiful? This is a topic that I plan on diving into in the near future but first, I want to talk about art put into nature.

There are ways of appreciating nature, as we have studied in this class that call on the interpretation of nature and our final appreciation of it should be likened to the constraints of art. There are also those that call on the employment of science, and still others that call on the overall experience of nature. Which are we to take. If we do end up choosing only one, how are we to take instances like the photograph above? This image shows a part of an underwater garden of statues made by the artist Jason deCaires Taylor in the Caribbean. The purpose of this eerie garden was to draw people away from the natural reefs and helps to preserve them by increasing the amount of people coming to this other part of the ocean. It is interesting how this concept links a conservation movement to protect something that is aesthetically viewed as very good and beautiful by something that under certain aesthetic lenses is not to be appreciated since it is disrupting the nature that was already there. This offers a puzzling conundrum for the philosophers that view man made things as unworthy.