Examining Nature Aesthetics in the Art of Rock Balancing

Rock balancing, also referred to as stone balancing or gravity art, is the art of stacking stones on top of each other, with as little contact as possible and using only gravity as adhesive, resulting to creative and ephemeral art installations. Many artists points to its meditative process, its oneness with nature aspect, and the feeling of awe that the art production process and the art produced invite from the creator and spectators alike, as the top reasons that draw artists to this form of art. While most practitioners usually create their installations in the vastness of nature, rock balancing is also now seen as an added element in landscaped gardens. And with this, one questions, like a site-specific installation, does rock balancing art lose certain aspects of its nature aesthetic quality when taken out from its usual setting in natural environments like rivers, streams, and creeks, and into a landscaped garden? And what accounts for the aesthetic difference of the artworks in these two settings? These queries pivot from Arnold Berleant’s question in The Aesthetics of Art and Nature, “Is the aesthetics of art distinct from the aesthetics of nature?”. And grounded on this question, I will attempt to compare the aesthetics of rock balancing art created in two different environments - the ones sprawling on a riverbed in Daranak Falls, and the ones installed in the coiffured setting of landscaped gardens.

One important characteristic of nature art is oneness with its organic environment, which, in R.W. Hepburn’s Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty, “requires that the aesthetic object should be at the same time the natural environment or some part of it”. Beautifully and naturally polished stones are usually found in beaches, rivers, streams, and creeks, hence, most artists usually work in these locations. In Daranak Falls, the artist used stones found in the same river where the artwork was installed. The colours and textures of the stones mimic the colours and textures of its surroundings. The artworks created blend in perfectly with the colours and textures of its surroundings. Michael Grab, a famous rock balancer said that,“…rock balancing is always an extension of the natural landscape (http://gravityglue.com/extensions-of-environment/). This natural blending of the artwork and the surroundings, if at all, may not be easily achieved in artworks installed in landscaped gardens. Generally, most stones used in landscaped gardens are collected from their natural environment and introduced into the landscape, and are hence foreign, and may not always naturally blend with the hues of its surroundings. The use of materials indigenous to the installation site affects whether the artwork blends or does not blend with its environment and for this reason, the artworks created in Daranak Falls tend to exhibit the aesthetics of nature art more as compared to the ones installed in landscaped gardens.

Arnold Berleant said, “What we grasp in the wilder states of nature, we appreciate too in its more cultivated forms”. The observation on the rock balancing installations in Daranak Falls and in the landscaped gardens seems to contradict Berleant’s claim. In Daranak Falls, the artwork production involves searching the location for the perfect stones, and the abundance of materials from which to choose from allows the artist to be more explorative and creative in his installations. Again, in the words of Grab, “it is an art form that flourishes in the moment” (http://gravityglue.com/extensions-of-environment/). In a landscaped garden setting, the artist is limited to the preselected materials that were collected to create the artwork. Sometimes, the artist may have already preconceived the artwork formation, and the stones have been especially selected with this design in mind. Changing the design may lead to the need for new materials. And the unavailability of new materials may suppress or limit the explorative and wanton creativity of the artist. This is to say that the rock balancing artworks in Daranak Falls were built with the intention to draw attention to the artist’s ability to defy gravity, and as such, they are objects of awe. In contrast, the artworks in landscaped gardens are usually less outrageous in form, as their formation has been preconceived, and is limited to the available materials on hand.

The ephemerality of rock balancing forms a major part of its nature aesthetic essence. This ephemerality is magnified when the artwork stands tall against a flowing river or stream, or the sweep of the breeze or wind. There is beauty in the way its fragility and transience is framed against the tempestuous and formidable nature. I was in awe when I reached the rock balancing installations in Daranak Falls, as there stood the artworks, looking undisturbed, despite the gust of wind and the gush of the stream where they were standing. In landscaped gardens, stability is celebrated more than ephemerality. When installing a balanced artwork in a landscaped garden, the artist would choose a site where the artwork will encounter the least amount of disturbance, from both humans and nature. Generally, artists will solely rely on gravity to hold the artwork together. In instances where the artwork collapses in a landscaped garden, the artist will be asked to re-mount the installation. The objective of minimising rework by settling with more stable and durable formations then overrules the desire to create highly improbable, awe-inspiring formations. I have even encountered an instance where, after creating the formations, the artist used manufactured adhesives to keep the structure intact throughout the duration of an exhibition. Immanuel Kant’s concept of disinterestedness that distances aesthetic experience from that which is personal and practical supports this observation. The rock balancing installations in Daranak Falls were created with no purpose in mind. The ones in the landscaped gardens, however, are decorative fixtures, hence, tend to be designed to be functional more than their counterparts installed in Daranak Falls.

Stone piles or cairns, as they are also called, were used as navigational tools in the ancient times. But in this age of google maps and Waze applications, practitioners use rock balancing, no longer as a navigational tool, but as a meditative exercise. Tim Anderson, a rock balancer, says he creates his artworks in rivers, streams, and creeks as these settings are conducive for full concentration which is ideal for achieving delicate balances. Leandro Inocencio, one of the two founders of Rock Balancing Philippines, who practices rock balancing both as a meditative exercise, as well as to produce installations for his landscape gardening works, conformed that the art production process is indeed meditative, not unlike the practice of zen meditation. And just like any form of meditation, practice is required to achieve mastery. Inocencio, who is also a landscape artist created a miniature flowing stream in his backyard and uses this spot to keep honing his rock balancing skills. The miniature stream mimics the sound of flowing water in natural bodies of water like rivers and streams, whose sound according to him, helps in achieving a meditative state. He maintains that, as meditation is a mental activity that looks inward, his meditative state is not affected whether he does his meditation out in the open nature, or in the confines of his backyard. In my observation, however, doing his rock balancing in his garden means that he already has stones that were preselected for the exercise. Working with preselected stones also means that he is already very familiar with the curves, anchors, and textures of each stone. In other art forms, familiarity with one’s material usually pushes the artist to expand his creativity and stretch the artistic value of his material. In rock balancing, however, familiarity with one’s material seems to turn the process of art production into a mechanical exercise. In a landscaped garden setting, the artist did not seem to have to achieve the state of full concentration or meditative state. It seemed more of a muscle memory work, thereby giving me the impression that the artwork was the product of a dextrous hand more than a meditative mind. Out in Daranak Falls, the art production started with the artist scrutinising the stream for a spot to create his rock balancing sculpture. He shares that a flat and sturdy stone would be an ideal base for the artwork. He then scours the place for stones of various shapes, and squats to start balancing the rocks. He started with pure balance, a style where one anchors a pointed stone on a flat-surfaced stone. He moves on and chose another spot to create freestyle, a technique that creates arch-like structures. He also created rock stacking, which he shared, is the simplest and the usual starting point for anyone who wants to learn rock balancing. And finally, he created counterbalance, the style that creates beautiful, breathtaking, awe-inspiring, fragile formations. In Daranak Falls, the art production process was a a succession of careful scrutiny of a place to create the artwork, scouring the place for stones that would perfectly balance together, and painstakingly creating the artwork. Out in nature, where his materials are abundant, where getting himself familiar with the environment was necessary, where organisms scurry away when you move the stones where they are hiding under, where the water is flowing and the breeze is fluttering, where a constant motion is heightened by a continuous stream of people crossing the nearby bridge, the artist talked less, and seemed to be more pensive during the process. The artworks produced seemed to have been borne out of the artist’s full concentration and meditative state, more than his skilful and steady hands. Unlike in the landscaped garden setting, the artwork production in Daranak Falls jived with the contemplative vibe of the surrounding nature.

The presence or absence of a frame is said to lead to a fork in the road in the comparison of the aesthetics of nature versus the aesthetics of art. The frame of a painting, for instance, tells the spectator to focus his gaze inside the frame as only the elements found within the frame are matters of aesthetic interest. A frame also aids in circumscribing the complete artwork, allowing the spectator to experience the aesthetics of its complete composition. In a landscaped garden, there exists a physical and conceptual frame. The physical frame being the garden itself, while the conceptual frame, being the design or the theme of the garden. The presence of these frames somehow detaches the artwork from its surroundings. Instead of referring to nature art as frameless, I am inclined to describe it as framed rather expansively. In the case of the rock balancing spot in Daranak Falls, it is framed by the bridge on the one end, the horizon on the opposite end, the clay slope perpendicular to the bridge, and the thick foliage opposite the clay slope. In terms of frame, the difference between the rock balancing art installed in Daranak Falls and the one in the landscaped garden is that, the former has a more extensive frame, while the latter has a more confined frame. This difference in the scale of the frame affects how the viewer perceives his relationship to the artwork. In a landscaped garden, the viewer tends to relate to the artwork as a spectator. Since he can circumscribe the complete composition of the artwork visually, the artwork is viewed as if it is a fixture, and excludes the sensations from nature that the spectator feels while viewing the artwork, such as the breath of the wind, a whiff of the scent of the nearby flowers, the chirping of of birds or the sound of other organisms in the garden. This exudes the feeling that the artwork is static, as if is a painting mounted on a wall, and that the installation is detached from the nature surrounding it. Out in Daranak Falls, the viewer is engulfed within the frame of the artwork. The artwork is dynamic as it becomes part of the movements, sights, sounds, scents, and other sensations pulsating from the surrounding nature. It is not merely viewed, but experienced.

There are two overarching reasons that account why rock balancing artworks created in Daranak Falls tend to exhibit nature aesthetics more than those in the landscaped gardens. The first reason is because of their materiality. The use of indigenous materials make them blend in, and becomes part of the surroundings. The second reason is because, they are creations that spring from mindful mindlessness. Mindful mindlessness refers to the intent to create gravity-defying, and highly improbable formations that has no end-purpose other than to elicit breathtaking awe. The artworks created in landscaped gardens, however, just like how a reproduction loses its aura, tend to lose their nature aesthetic quality because their creation is more concerned about functionality, stability, and practicability, and are less concerned about inspiring awe. But nature, with all its mystery and splendour, is all about inspiring awe.

References

Anderson, Tim. “The Precarious Artistry of Balancing Stones”, in Pond Aesthetics. (2015)(https://www.pondtrademag.com/the-precarious-artistry-of-balancing-stones/ ) [accessed, Dec 1, 2018].

Berleant Arnold. “The Aesthetics of Art and Nature” in Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell, eds., (1993) Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 228-243.

Carlson, Allen. “Environmental Aesthetics”, in Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes, eds. (2013). The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 3rd edition. London: Rotledge, pp. 485-498.

Caroll, Noel. “On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History”, in Kemal and Gaskell, eds., (1993), pp. 244-266.

Grab, Michael, (http://gravityglue.com/about/), [accessed, Dec 1, 2018].

“Gravity Meditation” (http://www.gravitymeditation.com/rock_balancing.html), [accessed, Dec 1, 2018].

Hepburn, R. W. “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty” in Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore, eds., (1996) British Analytical Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 285-310.