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A Prayer Plant (Maranta leuconeura) sits in a rusty metal cage. Every few minutes
a camera takes a picture of the plant. An LCD monitor hanging from the front of the
cage plays back a video loop of the accumulated images. Each time a new picture is
taken, it is added to the end of the looping video.
The Prayer Plant is an active plant; it folds its leaves up at dusk and unfolds them
at dawn. The rest of the day and night, its leaves slowly sway. The accumulated video
documents this movement, speeding it up to a human timescale.
It is easy to read the plant's movement as some sort of yearning or struggle, especially
given the context of the cage. I am compelled by, and wary of, the human tendency to
perceive human emotions, desires, and motivations in nearly any situation. I imagine
myself to be a rational, reasonable person, yet I'm constantly aware of ways in which
my rational knowledge of the world and my emotional response to the world are at odds.
How does one proceed in such a situation?
I was thinking about these ideas while creating
Fly Away (Not Going Very Far).
Fly Away (Not Going Very Far) was first shown as part of the
T-MINUS 2005 Timelapse Festival in New York City.
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image gallery
one month timelapse (11MB movie)
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douglas irving repetto