Michael Bielicky, Kamilia B Richter: The Garden of Error and Decay

Artist(s):

• Michael Bielicky
• Kamilia B Richter

Title:

The Garden of Error and Decay

Exhibition:

• SIGGRAPH 2011: Tracing Home in The Age of Networked Techniques

Creation Year:

2011

Category:

• Interactive & Monitor-Based

Artist Statement:

The Garden of Error and Decay is a poetic visualization of real-time world catastrophes. It reflects on the network media reality of the 21″ century through a continuous story of current world disasters, expressed by animated pictograms. Every time a disaster-related topic is discussed on Twitter, a new animation appears. Stock exchange information also influences the storytelling. Users interacting with the Garden have the opportunity to either eliminate or multiply the disaster scenes with a shooting device. However, it is not the user who actually has the power to decide in which direction the story develops once an event is triggered. As in real life, everything is driven by stock exchange dynamics; these dictate whether disasters proliferate or die down. This innovative moving image format is not a film, not a game, and not a nonlinear interactive story, but instead a real-time, data-driven narrative.