Ecological ambiguity and environmental visuality: a theoretical framework for atmospheric perception in contemporary ecological art

This article develops ecological ambiguity as a theoretical framework for analysing environmental visuality that does not operate through transparent representation, direct ecological messaging, or stable visual legibility. Drawing on environmental communication, visual culture, atmosphere studies, ecological art, phenomenology, semiotics, and design theory, it argues that contemporary ecological art can make environmental relation perceptible through four overlapping but analytically separable dimensions: opacity, fragmentation, atmospheric mediation, and relational uncertainty. The article is positioned as a conceptual study supported by illustrative visual analysis rather than as an empirical audience study or a fully practice-led research project. Selected atmospheric artworks and an author-created ecological poster sequence are examined as visual cases that clarify the proposed framework, not as evidence of measurable perceptual effects. The article contributes to ecological aesthetics and visual culture by showing what this synthesis adds to existing accounts of ambiguity, atmosphere, and ecological visibility: it identifies when ambiguity becomes ecologically meaningful rather than merely vague, decorative, or evasive. It also addresses the political risk that atmospheric ambiguity may depoliticise environmental crisis by specifying when ambiguity can sustain ecological accountability.