Scarecrows, Gardens, and the Digital

Being a student of the Time and Interactivity program at the University of Minnesota, I am certainly interested in digital/new media (the name of which, as you can see, is still poorly defined). One of the reasons I have been so drawn to this area, and interactive media in particular, is it’s ability to thoroughly engage the viewer, in a way that counters the more popular trend of disinterested contemplation, a concept made famous by Clement Greenberg.

I’ve always understood art and life as things that are inseparable, and art as the thing that helps us understand life. As life is an experience that involves body and mind, it seems only natural that art operate in a similar way, including the viewer and/or the world around it in the experience. Galleries anymore seem like places of stagnation for art. They’re great for seeking fame and fortune, but I’m still not sure if one isn’t better offer going to Hollywood to be famous.

So I’ve been working hard to make things that exist in a gallery in a way that subverts some of those notions of disinterested contemplation, and more recently have been thinking about where else art can exist. In a way it’s about democratising art a bit more, by putting things in places that allow them to reach audiences who might not otherwise venture into the gallery.

Enter the Scarecrows on Parade call for entries. This is an event hosted by the university’s arboretum, and is something I would probably overlook as a kind of art-fair event in other circumstances. But what better place to reach an audience that is atypical of digital/new media art?

This will probably be an event with alot of traditional sculptural methods for building the scarecrows. My hope incorporate a twist that brings the scarecrow to life, as something responding to its surroundings. I’m not sure what this will entail, perhaps a scarecrow that has some kind of response to bird calls or to things landing on it. Perhaps just has a simple sensor that sets of some kind of alarm . Perhaps it keep track of rainfall and soil chemistry. Maybe it just looks like a robot from the 50’s. Hmmm… We’ll see.