The influence of aerial views

The excerpt from Dreikausen’s book offered a few new aspects of aerial views which I personally find very interesting. I never knew that da Vinci was so interested in landscapes, let alone aerial perspectives. I have actually seen the Mona Lisa twice and never really noticed the landscape in the background. It is also fascinating that, once you think about it, you start seeing forms of landscapes in such a variety of abstract paintings. The idea of expressing certain ideas about for example nations and identity through landscapes and surroundings has extended from maps to paintings.
Then there is also the psychological aspect of aerial perception. “[…] human perception is a psychological fusion of multiple experiences, aerial perception deals with other ideas than merely the perspective of landscape seen from the air.” (325) An aerial view can also include a physical experience – the “sensation of flying”. (325)
An aerial view does not just mean looking from above; there are different ways of aerial perception and each of them contains different information and provokes different feelings. I think that the vertical view can rather be related to maps (grid pattern, “perceived in forms of topographic shape and size” 328) while the oblique view rather relates to landscapes (“wide-open space” 328). In addition to that, the aerial view is not only an enrichment for matters of aesthetics but also for historical aspects. Earthworks or Roman centuriations have been discovered from above.
All in all, it is quite stunning to realize that there is so much more to an aerial view than just the view itself; there are so many different fields that are actually influenced by the possibility of perceiving things from the air.