DIGITAL GARDEN - 2017
[3 Video Projections 12 min loop]
Using an integration of technology and environmental elements, this work explores the tension between the natural environment and mediated reality, along with an ongoing investigation surrounding the nature of perception. Moving image is used as a tool to explore how context and framing shape the meaning and experience of an artwork. Scavenged organic materials are utilised together with shifts in scale and lighting to create believable yet entirely artificial environments. By filming these scenarios in real time, the intention is to give the work a moment of ambiguity, that deals with the idea of image culture, and the replacing of direct experience with simulacra.
By utilising living nature, such as grass, Digital Garden aims to create a new botanical universe, a place between dreams and reality. By placing viewers in the heart of a reinvented nature, the work attempts to create a symbiosis between art, nature and us. The movement of each element in and out of the overall sequence suggests that what we see is only part of the work, the rest must be mentally reconstructed and in this way we project our vision beyond the “frame” of the artwork. In opposition to the unrelenting pace of digital existence, this new botanical universe unfolds in a slow mesmerising fashion, intended to create an environment of meditative contemplation.