"Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws." People think they are primarily 'thinking things', but this quote by a musician from ancient Athens speaks to the fact that most of our decision-making and the direction of our efforts in the world are shaped more by our affections. Creative and expressive arts are hugely influential. We should pay as much attention to what feeds our minds as we do to what feeds our physical bodies, and of course, we realize increasingly realize how connected minds and bodies are. This short monologue is an effort to get scientists to think about creative expression for science communication for artists to think scientifically about what values they portray and encourage in works of art.
The Art of Range Podcast is supported by the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission; Vence, a subsidiary of Merck Animal Health; and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.
Transcript
This podcast has been nearly entirely an interview-style audio show from the beginning. Once or twice I’ve done a monologue or paper reading for specific reasons. I’m doing that for this episode, which is a talk I prepared for a webinar we had planned to do under a grant supporting art-based rangeland education related to the Int’l Y of R & P. That webinar got postponed, but I suspect that there will be almost no overlap between podcast listeners and the future participants in that webinar, should we end up delivering it. And my preparation of this seemed serendipitous following the recent episode with Mike Mordell about the outdoor painter Frank Stick.
The presentation would have had some visual aids, and I will describe these or give you a search term to look up the imagery I’m alluding to.
This podcast is called The Art of Range in reference to an older definition of art, which is the practice or application of a body of knowledge, practice which requires localized, contextual, and builds over time. There are things we learn In the doing of a thing that can’t be learned by merely looking, by so-called objective observation. An example I’ve given is that an experienced truck driver knows something about driving a heavy load over a mountain pass that can only be acquired by doing it, and doing it over and over, with slightly different circumstances every time that increase the driver’s skill. I might be able to pass a Commercial Drivers License exam, but I would be a public hazard if I tried to drive the afore-mentioned loaded truck over a mountain pass, on packed snow and ice, with passenger cars everywhere. You get my point. Rangeland science is especially interesting to me because it can only be done well with what has been called co-production of knowledge. I know things about plants and animals and community dynamics that are of practical use to a rancher. But my knowledge of those things is also shaped, continually, by my interaction with people who live and work inside the landscape, who have a different kind of attachment to place than I have, and their knowledge requires practice, which we call art. As I’ve noted before, we say that one practices medicine, or practices law, or, in this case, is a grazing practitioner.
I have maintained that this is the main meaning of the word ‘art’. And in fact, the Merriam Webster dictionary gives as the first definition of art: “skill acquired by experience, study, or observation”.
But there is the related and more common front-of-mind definition of art: “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.” We sometimes call these the creative arts.
BIERSTADT PAINTING
There are many different kinds of creative arts: visual, such as painting and drawing; culinary arts, like food and wine; auditory arts, like music, or audible performance of literary arts like poetry; and, of course other literary arts, with all the genres of written literature. (Imagine or do an image search here for the Albert Bierstadt painting “Valley of the Yosemite”).
We know these things are powerful. Stories shape us. Good melodies are unforgettable. Good food brings people together and brings unique pleasure -- it facilitates fellowship, breaks down cultural barriers, inclines a person to treat their fellow humans like subjects rather than objects. These are the things that a life is made of. They speak of natural values, i.e., near-universal human values. They’re the things authors wax eloquent about.
CS Lewis said: “As long as we are thinking of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economies, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of the spirit.”
Works of art often bring to our attention the superlative, things that are so big (like natural values) that they resist being reduced to words. Scenes of natural beauty are good examples. And artistic representations of these scenes are good examples of the efficacy of art to influence human attitudes and behavior. The paintings of Albert Bierstadt, including this one of Yosemite before it was a national park, were largely responsible for the creation of several of the most iconic national parks. This was no small thing. These places shape our imagination and the works of art depicting them are icons of our respective countries.
Art is potent in moving our affections.
RICHARDS RANCH TRAILING CATTLE
Imagine now sagebrush steppe at the early peak of the growing season. Everything is green, grass is belly-high on cows, and you’re sitting off to the side of a barely discernible two-track road which doesn’t see much traffic. The only sounds are songbirds, a light breeze moving through the sage and bitterbrush. Then you see a few cow heads moving toward you on the horizon of a nearby rise. Then more . . . and more . . . until there are a couple hundred bovines calmy walking by, all together, seemingly enjoying the day along with the cowboys and cowgirls who are pulling them along. There’s a lot going on here. This beauty isn’t only aesthetic – it taps into real, complex, synergistic relationships that are worthy of wonder.
Jim Corbett said a couple decades ago that rangelands-based animal husbandry is now the only livelihood that represents a true interdependence between man and wild biotic communities. That synergy is truly superlative. And it resonates with an urbanized and urbanizing world population that is more disconnected from the natural world than at any time in earth history. And this disconnect has physical effects on people: as an example, there is mounting evidence that countless children who grow up entirely in cities are unhealthy, particularly with weak immune systems, because their bodies aren't ever exposed to living soil and the nearly infinite variety of microorganisms that stimulate even human bodies to generate subacute immune responses that accumulate and build broad health. So learning about people who care for animals who benefit land which feeds the animals which are provisioning food and clothing and shelter for people is a radical and beautiful thing. That's part of the synergy Jim Corbett had in mind.
We could describe some of the values depicted by this scene.
Low-stress livestock handling. That presupposes humans respecting animals, animals trusting people. It demonstrates people letting cows be cows, and that means moving, ordinarily, at a comfortable pace for cows. As the saying goes, you have to go slow to move fast. They don't have any reason to be in a hurry to get from here to there unless we impose that on them, and mentally healthy people who respect animals don't have to make the cows go 10 mph instead of 2 because they need to get back to watch Call the Midwife at 7:00. That the economic endeavor here of letting cows and calves grow also supports an activity that is uniquely healing for the human mind and good for the body speaks to the goodness or the right-ness of this activity. (You can argue with any of these things -- I'm just pointing out what one could reasonably 'read' from this image). We could go on, but you get the point. There is room for interpretation that is specific to the individual, but there is a beauty in the scene that is universal, even if we read different things in it. And just as a good book permits multiple readings, good imagery invites repeated reflection.
Works of art are more effective in changing behavior. I am working with some colleagues on a funded grant to do science education through public art. This is difficult for the world of funders, at least in the realm of science education. Grant funding for any kind of outreach is typically given to organizations or individuals that communicate a plan for effective behavior change (or at least use language that appeals to the philosophical and affective commitments of the review panelists to traditional, rational educational methods. Why use something other than that? For one, there is a long history of public information failures using traditional information delivery, and examples of successes using affective methods. A behavioral psychologist from Rutgers that we had speak for a water quality conference 20 years ago said it like this: We who fancy ourselves scientific-minded people subscribe to the deficit model of education -- we assume that if we fill someone else's mind with the facts that are in my head it will make them live differently. But, as he said, people know the "facts" about eating junk food, smoking, not exercising, safe sex . . . and on and on . . . and it is not very effective. But appealing to emotions is quite effective. My dad's parents stopped smoking in the 1980s because we, their grandchildren, badgered them into quitting using emotional appeals, subtle stuff like "We don't want you to die of lung cancer when you're 60". Surgeon General warnings on the cigarette boxes wasn't going to get that done. The warnings weren't useless -- they provided grist for the mill of emotional appeals, but alone that wouldn't be sufficient. My dad's parents both lived to over 90 years of age. Papaw's brothers all died in their 60s.
Arts engage people by focusing on the affective domain of learning instead of cognitive.
We think that humans are primarily thinking things, that we make most decisions about what to do in life based on rational analysis of objectively obtained facts. But we may be fooling ourselves. There’s a great quote I’ve used before from the author of the book “Little Prince” that speaks to this. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
We say we want to create behavior change in people. But affective methods that target attitudes or emotions are more likely to change behavior because people live toward what they want. The whole world of consumer advertising knows this very well and is constantly adapting based on what people respond to. And in the new world of digital advertising on non-traditional platforms where people spend their time companies employ attention engineers to experiment with what will most grab your attention. Look it up if you haven’t heard this before. If you want to be a rebel, this is where the real resistance is at.
The cognitive domain runs on the currency of comprehension, understanding, application. And of course, I've been using words to try to communicate these ideas to you with the expectation of influencing you toward using various arts well, different forms of creative expression, to make people care more about rangelands and the people of rangelands. I'm not an artist, but a lover of arts. So in the spirit of the thing I thought about trying to use some other medium than spoken words to do this and gave it up.
Guidance on arts-based science education recommends identifying the overarching goals of a project, characterizing the specific publics (geographic and demographic specifics) we hope to reach, comparing artist goals to scientist goals, identifying learnings goals for those audiences, and then working toward media or multimedia formats that may be accessible and engaging. This next step of creating artistic media of all kinds that is responsive to defined goals is way outside of my area of expertise. This is where we use artists and it's why communication is important. I can't do that. I can say I think A is better than B at generating X feeling or attitude shift. But that is the domain of artists. I have some of that in my gene pool but not so much in me.
Let's go back to the uniquenesses of animal husbandry on natural landscapes, it makes me wonder, What is it that people appreciate about this beautiful interrelationship between people and real, physical places? Because these are the things we're trying to tap into that influence attitudes.
BLUFF PHOTO, ROCKING W RANCH
I think people value pride of place. This has been largely lost with a mobile, urbanized population, although it may be coming back in a sort of social pendulum swing. My children have a connection to my family's ranch in Arkansas, which has been in the family since the Civil War, and which they've only visited a few times in their lives, and I can't explain that.
KATE'S PAINTING OF WHITE RIVER
One of my daughters likes to paint, and she painted this river scene on a tiny card (2 x 3") just to see how it would come out. These are the photos stitched together on the top of the episode page. There was no other motivation other than painting it expressed her delight in the scene and completed the emotion by providing an outlet for it and making it more possible to share that emotion with others.
And this gets at something that was pointed out to me by an art collector who wrote an illustrated biography about a famous nature painter, Frank Stick. This was the subject of the most recent podcast episode. This pride of place is important in art. A person who is from the White River valley in northern Arkansas will resonate with this painting, where someone from central Nevada will not, even though they may find it beautiful, well painted, a nice use of color, etc. Art is even more meaningful when it portrays in stylized or idealized ways a place or person or animals that the viewer is familiar with.
People also appreciate (in the synergies evident in animal husbandry) a connection to history: history of people, connection to meaningful traditions, to older ways of being, to seeing a cow as a partner in landscape management rather than a tool (AoR episode 135). Western civilization moved toward an aggressively utilitarian worldview through the period of the Enlightenment. This pragmatic way of seeing the world values efficiency, especially cost-efficiency, optimizing production, and tends to see all living and non-living things as raw material whose only value is determined by me using them for some purpose (also determined by me). But the whole of an ecosystem is truly greater than the sum of its parts. We can dissect it and sell off the pieces, but it's more valuable in its wholeness.
A musician in ancient Greece who has been quoted by others since, said: "Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws." The message is obvious. Music pulls us towards its message and shapes our affections, our desires. Music can prepare an army for battle, turn lovers' attention toward one another, make a stoic cry. Music is powerful. I don't listen to radio much anymore, but pull up the top ten songs on the pop charts, read the lyrics out loud, and tell me whether that's the world you want your children to live in. I won't apologize if this sounds trite. Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims.
I looked some of these up, and I wouldn't be willing to read them out loud in public or private. But that is my point.
Politics is downstream from culture, and we will live in the world created by our culture.
Which brings up a sobering and important point, maybe 2 of them. First, science communicators don't usually have that much influence. If we manage to get 1000 people to listen to folk music from Mongolia about pastoralism, it will be a major accomplishment. But we're not likely to be 100 million plays on YouTube.
But second, it begs the question: Are we just trying to manipulate people? This is the criticism leveled by the quantitative scientist. The qualitative scientist would probably reply that the quantitative scientist isn't even honest with herself about her biases and is therefore blind to the ways she's also manipulating people. And the social scientists would likely say that all of human relations are 'political' in a psychological sense. We are unable to avoid influencing and being influenced by others, even when we're trying not to be. So we should attempt to be aware of it and then be responsible about it.
How do we do this? Where do we start with arts-based science education? Tell good stories. Man bites dog makes the newspapers. But "man cares for dog which cares for cows which harvest plants which harvest sunlight and this recycles nutrients and supports healthy habitat where wild things grow . . . and the air is clean" . . . is a good story that makes a documentary. This is a big story, but we don't tell it as stories. And this project, which you will hear more about, is an effort to do just that.
A memoir either in writing or film is one kind of science communication. Literature on this also describes communication elements as simple as good graphics that are effective in conveying ideas (rather than directly influencing emotion and attitudes).
PAIGE STANLEY ARTICLE GRAPHIC.
But it can also be injecting more communicative imagery into scientific literature. There was an excellent graphic used in the scientific article by Paige Stanley about carbon and soils and grazing (see episode ) that did this well. It takes some chewing to get there, but there is a lot of meaning contained in it that is perhaps most effectively conveyed by the graphic and your subsequent mental chewing.
This is clearly not designed to communicate quickly to the public. But it goes much farther toward generating comprehension than the half dozen pages of text used to explain it.
MPF V. EGGS BENEDICT
How do we do good art that communicates well? This is more difficult. I don't have the skill of generating visual arts, although I appreciate them. I'm better at cooking than painting. Interestingly, in food, complexity and beauty often corresponds to health. Diverse foodstuffs, spices, micronutrients, all the stuff that makes food not just satisfying (as in satiating) but really meets the body's needs for secondary compounds that have innumerable functions. Beautiful food is almost always healthier food. There is a pair of images I will describe here that gets at that principle, and the idea behind it is also a call for humility in the sciences. Some group of scientists in the 1950s cooked up a scientifically formulated human complete feed and said it would meet the nutritionally needs of anyone who eats it. This, if you could see it, is a 3-lb large tin can (for listeners over 40, it’s the size of a 3-lb Folgers can) with a gray label and blue lettering which says “General Mills MPF, Multi Purpose Food. Protein-rich granules fortified with vitamins and minerals – precooked, ready to use”.
It would keep you alive . . . for a few weeks. But numerous scientists have shown, like Fred Provenza, that we need beauty in our diet because it's healthy. Contrast the MPF can with a classic half-order of eggs benedict, with a poached egg and salmon and spinach leaves and hollandaise sauce and fresh-ground pepper on a sourdough English muffin lightly toasted. Our bodies need that, and the variety of textures and colors and flavors communicates to us the variety of nutritional values offered by all these things.
I am not much of a visual arts artist. I am a musician. But I can only read and reproduce written music. I can't create new melodies and harmonies. I can barely even imagine that.
I can string words together all day long but not fictional prose. Can't imagine that either. People like me, who understand ecology and animal husbandry, need to collaborate with people like my daughters and others out there who have an intuitive sense of what is beautiful and how to communicate it through various artist media.
This is a call to artists to work with land managers and science folk to work together to create various expressive media that communicate the wonder and beauty and nearly incomprehensible ecological functionality of this socio-ecological system that is livestock husbandry on rangelands.
Arts-Based Rangeland Education for the Int'l Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists