SuperForest

This week’s Modern Art Chat brings a real cool art project concerning the global recession. Believe me, it’s fun and in a way it removes the negative focus that has been applied to the phenomenon lately. But first something totally different that found it’s way to me a few days ago.

Have you ever wondered what those toilet paper rolls were useful for? As SuperForester Jackson showed earlier this week they are very handy when it comes to making your own couch. But they also turn in practical if you’re interested in becoming a sculptor, as Junior Fitz Jacquet – a French artist – shows on LOUDreams. He made really fun faces out of the small rolls so be sure to check it out.

And back to the main subject of this Art Chat again: Vending Machine by Ellie Harrison.

Harrison is known for her art projects that have something to do with fetching data and doing something with it. In my opinion this is real modern art since something from society directly influences the thing that happens within the art project. This also applies to Vending Machine. As it name suggests the project consists of an (old) vending machine. This machine is connected to a computer with an internet connection. The computer on its turn constantly checks out the BBC’s main RSS feed for the most recent news, and whenever a news item contains terms related to the recession it sends a signal to the vending machine to spawn a free snack.

This video illustrates it all.

Though this machine may appear as an innocent joke toward the recession, the underlying meaning Harrison assigned to it is far from. She says that, in the future, our food may not be available at an unlimited rate. It is possible that our food supply is coherent with political, social and environmental events. Floods and droughts for e.g. can widely influence the success a yield experiences.

Therefore Vending Machine can be seen as a warning joke. In the first place it’s a wink towards the economic crisis and in the second place it warns us for the future dangers that are contained within our global problems. Fortunately enough there’s always the Cincinatti Superhero, algaefuel and of course… SuperForest. Have a nice week.