Digital Garden

Digital Garden explores the tension between the natural environment and mediated reality through the lens of moving image, continuing an ongoing investigation into perception, context, and constructed experience. Framing and sequencing are used to shape the meaning of each moment, prompting viewers to consider how imagery influences our understanding of the world.

Organic materials gathered from natural surroundings, are repurposed and filmed in real time, using shifts in scale and lighting to construct artificial yet believable environments. These carefully composed scenes hover between reality and illusion, creating a moment of ambiguity that reflects on the replacement of direct experience with image-based culture.

Originally developed as an immersive installation featuring three synchronised projections and a living grass environment, the work has since evolved into a standalone moving image piece. This evolution allows Digital Garden to adapt to new spaces and audiences, while still evoking the dreamlike, contemplative atmosphere of its original form. As elements drift in and out of frame, viewers are invited to mentally reconstruct the whole, projecting their own interpretation beyond the screen.

In contrast to the relentless tempo of digital life, Digital Garden unfolds slowly, inviting stillness, observation, and reflection within a newly imagined botanical universe.

Exhibitions
Landscape as a Monument – Izolyatsia, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2020
Digital Screens – Studio One Toi Tū, Auckland Festival of Photography, 2019
Movement – Coventry Cathedral, Coventry, UK, 2019
SEE Djerba, International Media Art Biennial – Houmt Souk, Tunisia, 2019
ON Public Gallery – Medina of Tunis, 2019
Whitecliffe Graduation – Auckland, 2017