[ Lost in the Landscape ]

no drought in these gardens

After liv­ing with drought for the last sev­eral years it’s refresh­ing to take a look at some gar­dens where water appears as an unlim­ited resource. Last weekend’s L.A. Times Home sec­tion fea­tured an arti­cle on iwagumi, the art of aquas­cap­ing. Take a Japan­ese gar­den aes­thetic, only apply it to a fish­tank, and you have a basic take on iwagumi.

Above: Luis Car­los Galar­raga, Sao Paulo Brazil, “When the rocks flow.” [ source ]

Each year the Aquatic Gar­den­ers Asso­ci­a­tion hosts a com­pe­ti­tion for pho­tographs of these care­fully planted tanks. (This year’s con­test dead­line is Sep­tem­ber 30.) Con­tes­tants have to apply the same design sense that they’d need to work with in a gar­den on land. But instead of the famil­iar plants of the ter­res­trial realm, they’re using aquatic species, most fre­quently plant­ing them among an assort­ment of strik­ing stones. In these gar­dens the del­i­cate crea­tures over­head aren’t birds, but fish.

The image above and the two below are medium-sized tanks from last year’s com­pe­ti­tion. Click on the “source” link and you’ll be taken to the page where you’ll see more images of each project, along with com­ments from the competition’s judges. It’s a very spe­cial­ized aes­thetic that they’re employ­ing in the scor­ing, but the com­ments are inter­est­ing to read with a grain of salt, and might give you ideas on how to play with plants and space in gar­dens that live on the other side of the water table.

Above: Mélisse Moireau, Sar­celles France, “Grass­land sun­set.” [ source ]

Above: Michal Paster­nak, Krakow Poland, “Sun­set.” [ source ]

Since we’re air-breathing crea­tures these tanks trans­port us to a realm where we nor­mally don’t have an oppor­tu­nity to look at in any detail. They remind me a lot of the pho­tog­ra­phy of Karen Glaser, a Chicago pho­tog­ra­pher that I had a chance to exhibit with a few years back in a group show here in town at the Museum of Pho­to­graphic Arts. Much of Karen’s work is taken under­wa­ter, in the oceans or in swamps. Her mag­i­cal, mys­te­ri­ous work is noth­ing like the clichés that make up most other under­wa­ter photography.

This image: Karen Glaser: Dust Storm in Cat­fish Sink, 2006, Pig­ment Print on Hah­nemühle Photo Rag, 37x25in.

Check out her web­site for lots more exam­ples of her beau­ti­ful work.

September 25 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design | Tags: aquariums • aquatic plants • iwagumi • Karen Glaser • underwater photography • underwater plants | 12 Comments »

spam plants

Ever won­der what to do with all that junk elec­tronic mail you receive?

If you’re Roman­ian artist Alex Drag­ulescu you might turn the annoy­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions into gor­geous art­works. One of his series, Spam Plants, takes the mes­sages and uses them as “plant food” to grow dig­i­tal art­works. Cer­tain val­ues in the mes­sages inter­act with a com­puter script to gen­er­ate the dig­i­tal organ­isms. The “plants” that result from this pro­gram look like amaz­ing under­wa­ter denizens.

(This first piece must have been derived from mul­ti­ple Via­gra ads…)

These works date from when he was at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego, where he received his M.A. and then was involved with the Exper­i­men­tal Game Lab and the Cen­ter in Research for Com­put­ing and the Arts. (Cur­rently he’s a researcher at the MIT Media Lab.) These aren’t the only works he’s done using unwanted elec­tronic junk mail. Check out his Respam and Spam Archi­tec­ture series (my favorites of these works).

Cur­rently his work is the “Data + Art” Exhi­bi­tion at the Pasadena Museum of Cal­i­for­nia Art, a show that ends April 12.

[ These images copy­right Alex Drag­ulescu, all rights reserved ]

February 06 2009 | Categories: art | Tags: Alex Dragulescu • computer-based art • digital art • e-mail • junk mail • spam • underwater plants | 1 Comment »