Taman Negara, Malaysia. Walking in a jungle is the ultimate experience of non-spatiality. The jungle surrounds the hiker with a similar colour range in all directions, and a constant and even soundscape. When walking it is impossible to anticipate the path ahead and so every move becomes questionable and doubtful. Since neither the sky nor is the horizon are visible, there is no distant feature to look at, and it is therefore useless to measure a path in spatial dimensions. Time becomes the only sensible way to measure distance. But even time is hard to grasp since the light in the jungle remains constant throughout the day, and no other periods than lightness and darkness can be distinguished.
The feeling for space, which is absent in the totality of the tropical forest, is overwhelmingly present when entering a cave. The movement of the own body, the steps on the ground are no longer dampened, but are reflected from the cave’s enclosure. The echo is reassuring. Moving on into the cave creates a sequence of different images depending on the spatial dimensions of the void space. There is meaning in moving forward, or backward, inwards or outwards, into the dark or into the light. It is in the cave that we start to grasp spatiality. The absence of spatiality in the jungle questions the possibility of existence.
Cities in the jungle, or in places that used to be covered with tropical forests, must – I guess – somehow have a subconscious resistance against this overwhelming wilderness. It was through my hike in the jungle of Taman Negara in Malaysia, that I felt I could understand Singapore much better than through approaching it by plane. When departing for Singapore from a European airport one can see the tamed, regulated landscape from centuries of cultivation on the ground. Here, the urban jungle as a metaphor for creative chaos in the city has a positive connotation. But when approaching Singapore from the jungle the latent presence of the untamed wilderness is not necessarily positive. Entering Singapore from the land casts a different light on the sometimes-cramped sense of control of life on this tropical island.Taman Negara, Malaysia. Walking in a jungle is the ultimate experience of non-spatiality. The jungle surrounds the hiker with a similar colour range in all directions, and a constant and even soundscape. When walking it is impossible to anticipate the path ahead and so every move becomes questionable and doubtful. Since neither the sky nor is the horizon are visible, there is no distant feature to look at, and it is therefore useless to measure a path in spatial dimensions. Time becomes the only sensible way to measure distance. But even time is hard to grasp since the light in the jungle remains constant throughout the day, and no other periods than lightness and darkness can be distinguished.
The feeling for space, which is absent in the totality of the tropical forest, is overwhelmingly present when entering a cave. The movement of the own body, the steps on the ground are no longer dampened, but are reflected from the cave’s enclosure. The echo is reassuring. Moving on into the cave creates a sequence of different images depending on the spatial dimensions of the void space. There is meaning in moving forward, or backward, inwards or outwards, into the dark or into the light. It is in the cave that we start to grasp spatiality. The absence of spatiality in the jungle questions the possibility of existence.
Cities in the jungle, or in places that used to be covered with tropical forests, must – I guess – somehow have a subconscious resistance against this overwhelming wilderness. It was through my hike in the jungle of Taman Negara in Malaysia, that I felt I could understand Singapore much better than through approaching it by plane. When departing for Singapore from a European airport one can see the tamed, regulated landscape from centuries of cultivation on the ground. Here, the urban jungle as a metaphor for creative chaos in the city has a positive connotation. But when approaching Singapore from the jungle the latent presence of the untamed wilderness is not necessarily positive. Entering Singapore from the land casts a different light on the sometimes-cramped sense of control of life on this tropical island.