Future Monument to the Trees of the Public Garden
Kate Farrington’s “Future Monument to the Trees of the Public Garden” is a Socially Engaged Art project using Augmented Reality (AR) technology to explore our responsibility to the natural world and the benefits of developing inter-species relationships through an audio tour of trees within the Boston Public Garden, which during workshops will be transformed into a field research site to consider the role trees play in shaping in Boston’s public imagination. Posing inquiries that question our responsibility to interspecies relationships, the project will feature audio essays penned by workshop participants who adopt a tree and reflect on it through scientific, aesthetic, and ethical lenses, creating “future monuments” that will be accessible via mobile phones and an accompanying website.
The project has its origins in an assignment for her Environmental Ethics students at Emerson College where the Public Garden was transformed into a field research site. Each student chose a tree to research on three registers: objectively, artistically, and ethically. The students then shared their reflections on a “Woods Walk.” Future Monument to the Trees of the Public Garden extends the spirit of that original assignment to create a shared event for the public to experience together (including the trees!), thereby enacting shared authorship of the city of Boston.
Project Origin
Introduction to the Project from Workshop #1,
September 28, 2024.
YEAR ONE
