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LANDSCAPE / INTERIOR. A SCREEN SAVER
The screen saver "Landscape/Interior"
is thematically correlated to the installation "Interior/Landscape.
A Cabinet" being shown on documenta X. The installation consists of five miniature landscapes, arranging living plants on volcanic rocks. They are situated in a cabinet without windows, whose walls are covered with a floral wallpaper. In the same room an extremely enlarged photograph is showing one of the miniature landscapes. Each element of the interior, artistic image or biological material is considered as equal constituent of the overall design. The distinction between artificial-natural or inside-outside becomes invalid. The conception focuses on the criteria for the design, not on the material which is used.
The screen saver continues this installation
indicating that the experience of nature is no longer bound to
certain qualities of material. Under a formal point of view it adopts
the pattern of the wallpaper showing ornaments of a silhouette
chosen from a series that were modelled on imaginary plants. The
idea of the silhouette refers to German romanticism (Philipp Otto
Runge) and its ideas of imagining and experiencing nature.
There are two important texts that refer
to this area of conflict between romanticism and the digital presence:
On one hand, Edgar Allen Poe's novel "The Park of Arnheim",
in which we are told that "the natural beauty is never as
great as beauty that can be added...".
On the other hand,
Kevin Kelly's essay "Out of control", 1994, describes
his vision of a world, where the traditional idea of nature is
replaced by the fusion of technology and biology. Kelly's vision
radicalises Poe's idea of the superiority of the artificial. "I am sealed in a cottage of glass that is completely airtight. Inside I breathe my exhalations. Yet the air is fresh, blown by fans. My urine and excrement are recycled by a system of ducts, pipes, wires, plants, and marsh-microbes, and redeemed into water and food which I can eat. Tasty food. Good water.... I am in a test module for living in space... What is clearly happening inside this glass capsule is happening less clearly at the great scale on the Earth in the closing years of this millennium. The realm of the born - all that is nature - and the realm of the made - all that is humanly constructed - are becoming one. Machines are becoming biological is becoming engineered ... our technological future is headed toward a neo-biological civilisation."
The screen saver comes in the same colours
as the wallpaper: green, yellow, blue and red. It shows the pattern
of the wallpaper, scrolling on the screen, accompanied by the
twittering of birds and other natural sounds, creating an interior
for the user that appeals to the individual experience of nature.
The artist calls it a "digital piece of nature".
Where is "Landscape/Interior"
to be seen at documenta X?
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