bremner benedict

Landscape as perspective

Re-imagining Eden looks at the changing relationship we have to the environment. Their unifying theme is loss. From myth, we picture the natural world as a collection of stories that define us. John Milton in poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained describes Eden as a place where a lost past and an imagined future are intertwined. He believes that human identity is inseparable from nature. Changes produced by the industrial revolution inspired people to create places where our culture decides what is important to remember from disappearing habitats. Today’s technology interrupts our ability to experience the natural world as pristine. Nature no longer serves as a source of our identity.  This eroding sense of connection makes the shape of our future unclear. In this series Museum Windows, I integrate a child, my daughter, into natural history displays where she can have fantasy experiences of what no longer exists.  In Wanderer, that child is a virtual person, a cutout, who no longer needs to be in the environment to experience it. I wonder what kind of world my daughter will embrace as connections to nature continue to fade.

 

walden lotnew mexicosan juan
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