'On the Aesthetics of Gravel' page 2

A critical review of The Living Garden Project, as constructed and as a concept

DEVELOPMENT

I had had an opportunity to encounter the practical, technical and market-based realities of multimedia development within the early part of the course, working on the Milia D'Or winning UnZip - the 'UK's first fully interactive magazine on CD-Rom' (an interesting story in its own right...) at IPC Magazines. With this experience under my belt I intended to make use of the opportunity which I believed an academic MA course of study offered of being able to critically challenge its own frame of reference during the latter stages of the MA.

My original plan was to develop and describe the ideas behind the Living Garden in book form. This, however, appeared to present difficulties within the framework of the MA, and after the interim assessment Peter Robinson and I resigned ourselves to realising the scheme as an 'exhibit' within the Circuit show which would form the back-drop for a public exhibition and an academic assessment of work on display.

The main aim in terms of developing the installation was to tell a story of what the Garden was and how it worked - in essence to maintain the narrative structure of the original book. With this in mind, the installation aimed to:

  • Explain concepts behind the Garden as an intellectual scheme
  • Encourage real interactivity within the exhibit by encouraging a walk-through in which the different ideas behind the Garden would be revealed, one-by-one
  • Establish the concept of place - the Garden as an architectural system
  • Introduce tension between the installation and other exhibits at the show - the sense of 'here' and 'elsewhere'
  • Explode the 2D screen-based computer monitor as the de facto standard interface for multimedia by proposing a physical landscape (a garden) as an alternative
  • Provide practical examples of simple authoring tools and messages
  • Develop a Living Garden World-Wide Web site as a reference point for the project (see: The Living Garden (at www.livinggarden.net).
  • Introduce some elements of fun

Clearly, whilst a book provided a means to control, highlight and develop on these themes in a controlled flow, actually building an open installation to achieve these same ends presented something of a challenge.