Devotional Gardening Tools
2011
Gardening as an activity embodies devotion, the idea that through practice and effort, particular results can be obtained. Devotion is performative, taking time, effort, and repetition to get the results that you want. By building gardening implements that emphasize the repetitive physical nature of gardening work, performing the work develops into a broader practice--one that is more reflexive and meditative.
Digital media technologies allow the creation of tools that embody rhetoric, creating ancillary functionalities that help to underscore issues of practice during use. Instrumenting traditional gardening tools to create space for religious-type experiences using electronics creates a tension in two dimensions: one, countering idea of gardening and small-scale agriculture as being somehow more natural or closer to the earth by mediating the experience in an unexpected way; and two, through using electronics as a digital medium for fostering a resonant spiritual experience with material objects.
Publication:
- Devotional gardening tools (CHI 2013)
