Some quick thoughts about two North Carolina landscapes.
Here are two scenes I’ve come across recently. Both of them are in the Triangle area of North Carolina.
You might not notice anything particularly interesting about the first from ground level. From above, however, this shiny new traffic circle introduces the idea of a landscape that is digestible in capsule form. Additionally, this is one of those renderings so closely mirroring its blueprint that the representation and the reality collapse into each other. En plein air would become difficult to achive with this scene since the artist could never be sure of whether they were witnessing the environment before them or a drawing of it.
The second, where land is being cleared for a new housing development, brings up the idea of reverse terraforming. With terraforming, one normally thinks of crafting an alien planetary body to take on the characteristics of Earth (atmosphere, vegetation, oceans). Here, the opposite occurs. As the machines scrape away the trees and topsoil, the land begins to resemble the surface of Mars. You can actually imagine that you are looking at an image of a post-terraformed red planet where the process hasn’t quite completed. Seen in this way, the greenery will eventually close in to a threshold where townhouses and a community swimming pool can finally be built.