Dave Hebb - Monitor

Monitor is a year long video and photographic documentation of an environmental intervention. A computer monitor was placed in a field and videotaped several times a week for the duration of a year. During that time, a symbolic burning and minor excavation was performed around the perimeter of the monitor that echoed its rectangular shape. Over time, the excavation eventually filled in with new growth, asserting the cyclical regenerative power of the seasons in nature over the destructive machinations of mankind. The video must be viewed as a seamless endless loop to fully recognize the repeating cyclical structure of the natural environment.




The title of the video is seemingly straightforward, but also has a dual meaning. The video's subject is an object called a computer monitor, but the title can also serve as a verb, as the video is also monitoring the landscape over a long span of time. This poses open-ended questions about time, site, archetypal structure, the entropy of nature, and the longing for meaning. The video uses a variety of time frames, metaphor, and the contrast between personal interior domestic space and global exterior environment to examine the industrial infrastructure which supports our technological way of life. The implied conclusion is that nature will outlast us, and ultimately surround our discarded attempts at technological perfection with the messy but loving embrace of flowers and greenery, but the implied question of our own mortality as a species remains unanswered.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Dave Hebb
• Hebb
• video art
• monitor
• computer
• decay
• entropy
• nature
• time lapse
• growth