Contentsgarden.local is an art project that combines drawing installations, local wireless networks, and a website based on those same drawings and networks. Audience members may use their own smartphones or those provided by the gallery to enter the software-generated garden. Once inside the garden, audience members are able to experience the transformation of the garden through visual, sound and textual elements, witnessing and cultivating the growing mosses, lichens, and mushrooms within. In this essay, I will prioritize exploring the conceptual inquiries, followed by a footnote for collaborators, technical details and accessibility.
Conceptual Inquiries
The project asks questions about the relationships between computers, networks, communities and the environment. What if the Internet is like a garden, full of moss, lichens, and mushrooms? What would it be like if humans could visit this lush, natural environment and listen to the tales of the software-plants, and rest against the hardware-earth, and exchange vital forms of care with various data-creatures?
Internet protocols and infrastructure make up the fabric of all online communication. Certain aspects of the Internet we are most familiar with - especially commercial platforms like Facebook and Google - have problematic practices with regard to privacy, security, and data sovereignty. At the same time, we must ask ourselves: is the Internet, in fact, a singular space? What can we do to allow for different approaches and modes of thought to enter it?
Practically speaking, in some urban areas that experience disparities in web access, “Community Technology”1 activists have set up mesh networks to provide widespread alternative access, demonstrating their commitment to decentralizing the Internet and building more equitable conditions for and connections between all people.
Generally, we tend to think of computers and the Internet as separate things, but in fact, the internet is just the largest computer ever built. So if this Internet, then, can be transformed into a garden, computers themselves will become spaces of software-plants, hardware-dirt, and data-creatures.