Some Communication Models                and their      Implications to Gardens.

Within the context of our System and Sorroundings depicted in Diagram 1 we can describe the arrow connecting Garden with Observer as a communication link whereby the Garden sends a message to the Observer. The interpretation of this link will vary according to the model chosen.

The message is sent during a garden situation, that is, a situation where an static Observer is in front of a section of the Garden which is wholly included by his field of view. We propose to call such a section or portion a garden unit. This concept of garden unit (GU) will play a central role in the next pages. See also Organization of Garden Units.          A garden situation is represented in the diagram below:

" A garden situation "

The "Hey" is, of course, the message sent to the Observer by the garden unit. This is our first (and quite crude)  communication model.    A model may be defined as "an abstract representation of reality" and I'll remind again the reader that a model,  howsoever pretentious, does not pretend in any way to be a picture of reality. (For more about models see PCW/Model and ann.Quino,empty)

Of the numerous communication models that have been proposed (cf), we have chosen three to illustrate the garden situation: the basic Lasswell formula, the classical model of Shannon and Weaver and the one of Clausse for differential audience reach.           a)Lasswell Formula: according to Lasswell (1) a  communication act may be described by answering to five main questions which appear in the blocks of the Diagram 2 below: .

Diagram 2. Lasswell formula and its                     adaptation to gardens (green)

The horizontal rows in the above diagram are self explanatory, but the vertical columns merit some remarks. In each column the top box is from Lasswell original formula,the second the corresponding element of the communication process and the bottom one, in green, is my proposition for the coresponding element in a Garden Situation. The columns can be read as a set of questions and answers,thus:                                                              Questions                                    Answers            - Who is the communicator?   ...............         - The Garden Unit.            -  What says the message       .....................   -  The image content                -  To whom? Who is the receiver? .................-  The Observer (audience)           -   With what effect?          ......................        -  Three options: Pleasing                                                                                                    Displeasing                                                                                                    Indifferent.           The first question belongs to the field of control studies, that is the ways and means to control the garden unit so that it gives the desired message,  the one that causes apleasing effect on the Obsever;(for more about control see PCW/CTRL) The last question belongs to the field of effect analysis. These two fields will be explored later in another context. In the meantime it is worth pointing out the merits and limitations of the adaptation of Lasswell model. We said above that a model can be thought of as an abstract represen- tation of reality; Lasswell's is sufficiently abstract to be applied to nearly any common situation, a dialogue, newspaper, TV, mating signals,etc.etc. Our adaptation is by consequence, also very general: by changing the l.h.s. box it can be aplied to looking at a painting, reading a book, looking at food, in fact any common situation  in which the channel is visual. The advantage of generality in this case is that the same general principles or laws that apply in another case in this cathegory should apply to the garden case and thus the general principles of aesthetics for paintings should apply to our adaptation of the model to gardens. This generality however turns into a disadvantage for the control studies of given situations. For instance, the effect cannot be quantisized in the model because the message is not and hence control can be only very general. To overcome this disadvantage we turn to another model who is less general but more precise, the one proposed by Shannon and Weaver(2) that is discussed in next page.

References: -(1) Lasswell H.D.: The Structure and Function of Comm. in Society;in Bryson,ed.                           The Comm. of Ideas, Harper and Both.(1948) (2) Shannon C. and Weaber W.: The Mathematical Theory of Communication,                           Illinois Univ. Press,(1949) (3) Clausse R.: The public at grips with mass comm.; Intnl. Social Sci. J.,20,4,625-643                         (1968) (4) Comm.Models

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