The aesthetics of digital representation: realism, abstraction and kitsch

Aesthetics of representation are influenced by landscape architects' ethical obligations to place, client, society and their peers. Historically, landscape design representations mimicked the media and techniques of their popular and fine art contemporaries; in today's culture, the ultra-realism of synthetic landscapes as used in film and game media influences design representation. With affordable access to digital landscape modelling programmes, landscape architects find themselves at an aesthetic and ethical crossroads. When ultra-realistic renderings are accepted as the ultimate design graphic, the result can be kitsch; designers have an ethical obligation to avoid the pitfalls of such easily-accepted landscape kitsch. If unthinking realism leads to kitsch, how can landscape architects reintegrate abstraction into digital representation? Examining representation within an art historical framework, we focus upon three major pictorial expressions of landscape identified by Kenneth Clark: landscape of symbols, of fantasy and of facts. Employing these three types, we explore the tension between realism and abstraction in each kind of representation to reveal antidotes to kitsch.