A Piece of Raanujärvi : creating aesthetic experience through applied visual arts

Abstract

As included in the part of AAD program’s project, A Piece of Raanujärvi is an exploration of applied visual arts with the place-specific development of localness resulting in creating the practice of environmental aesthetic experience. The research runs a cooperation with local home-stay tourism business, Kassun Koti, in Raanujärvi. A village locates at Lapland, where has typical Finnish nature and lifestyle in the north area. The aim of the research is to be beneficial for attracting international tourists, expressing the unique charm arising in daily life and nature among silence, space, bodily sensory and the experience in the action of everyday life aesthetic through artistic interventions. The research theory is focusing on the values of silence and its relations to space, place and time, creating the aesthetic experience with the aesthetic engagement perception which means including the body and its senses into the experience. It emphasizes the integration and continuity, the activeness of human being’s engaging, giving back aesthetics into the environment and everyday life.

This paper essentially focuses on two research questions: (1) To what extent can applied art be used to create an aesthetic experience about a place? (2) Thus, to what extent can applied art be useful to promote place-based tourism? Art-based action research method is unfolded by the foundation of qualitative research. Place-mapping, questionnaires, interviews, and meetings have gathered data for deep insights into the social-cultural circumstance along with uncovering and facilitating the needs of the place-specific business. Filming and graphic design are utilized for the intervention into the process, visual representation by the means of art, reflecting senses as well as conveying the tangible communication.

A piece of Raanujärvi is not only a research about the place in particular, but also a wide sphere in the human experience with artistic approaches and how it can be beneficial and practical in the social, cultural interrelations.