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Ken Goldberg

Digital media artist Ken Goldberg’s work includes pieces which his audience can interact with. One of his creations is Telegarden. In this piece, people can go to a website showing an image of a garden, which has a robotic arm in its center. The viewer is informed that they can control this robot from their computer. By doing this, they can care for the garden’s plants. One of the ideas involved with this piece is a person’s doubt of the reality of what they see over the internet. An online participant doesn’t view the garden in person; they simply see a computer image of it. The viewer cannot prove for certain if they have actually helped tend to a garden, or simply manipulated an on-screen image. However, there is an actual garden, which was placed in a gallery in Austria. This piece of art combines the traditional idea of a work of art “the creation of an actual garden” with modern technology “the robotic arm” and digital media “the website.”

Goldberg also has a piece called Demonstrate. This artwork also involves video connected with a website. This allows internet users to use a surveillance camera to watch people in a part of University of California at Berkeley. The site was the location of Free Speech Movement demonstrations, which is significant in the piece. The fact that random people are being watched on camera shows a lack of freedom, as the surveillance gives people little privacy.

Goldberg’s works connect people through digital media. The Telegarden piece has online participants from all over the world. These people are brought together by the website, and connected because they have all contributed to caring for the actual garden. The piece shows a connection between something as natural as a garden, with such advanced technology as robotics and the internet. With Demonstrate, users can watch people at the university from their computers. The artworks show how digital media can be good, but also potentially bad since people can lose personal freedoms like privacy. Although they are entertaining for the audience to participate in, Goldberg’s creations also have depth and meaning behind them.

Ken Goldberg’s Telegarden

https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Ken+Goldberg