Intriguingly, patterns of language diversification resemble biodiversity’s ones, suggesting that similar mechanisms may underlie both. Die Urpflanze is a series of sunprints collected in a booklet providing a visualisation of how the so-called biocultural diversity is distributed globally.
Metaphor used:
Each picture represents a zone of different biological diversity according to a system of ten categories (Diversity Zones) that sorts world areas by vascular plants diversification. Data about DZs' linguistic diversity is conveyed by time of exposure, with each print varying in contrast and intensity from being exposed to sunlight for a time span proportional to corresponding language density. Botanical images, like languages, act as a vehicle to pass environmental knowledge and culture, enabling to show the direct correlation between the two worlds considered in the project and the emerging trend: the richer the cultures, the more the ways to know, represent and preserve the surrounding environment. The complete series metaphorically represents Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s imaginary primordial plant from which all plant forms originate, therefore containing in itself every possibility of variation.
Intended Meaning:
Biodiversity preservation around the world is endangered by the lack of knowledge of local environment. The general trend towards increasing linguistic diversity in areas of increasing plant diversity highlights the mutual relationship that binds languages and the natural world and warns about how linguistic and cultural conservation is as fundamental as biodiversity’s. The project focuses on this particular aspect of the dataset and aims at investigating how cultural homologation can have a broader impact on different levels.
Source:
Stepp, John Richard, Sarah Cervone, Hector Castaneda, Ava Lasseter, Gabriela Stocks, and Yael Gichon. 2004. "Development of a GIS for Global Biocultural Diversity." Policy Matters 13: 267–270
