Robert Hengeveld
Rolls of sod are laid end to end along a narrow aluminum structure. A wheeled light assembly continually moves across the grass as if scanning it, this is occasionally interrupted by the rapid entrance of a reel mower that cuts back any growth of the last twenty minutes. The lights again return to its methodical sweeping. Periodically, a watering-boom also enters the stage misting the grass according to the atmospheric conditions.
The project incorporates an intentionally overstated measure of technology to explore the very role that technology plays in the culture in which we live. More specifically, the work – in its fantastical amplification of the technology’s use in the everyday – examines how this technology (communications, chemical, genetic) is used to control the environments we inhabit; as a means of making things more convenient, more comfortable, more aesthetic.
Robert Hengeveld is an artist living and working in Newfoundland. His creative practice manifests itself in many different forms, but exploring and experimenting with how we perceive and preconceive the world around us would be one way to summarize a given direction in the past several years. The means through which this has been achieved is quite diverse ranging from autonomous robotics to the reworking of salvaged materials. Projects often emerge through collaborative investigation, incorporating the expertise and insight of engineers, musicians, choreographers, poets, community members, and other artists.
“Sometimes I don’t believe it, but I hear there are people who have never gone for a walk in the woods or something. There’s a bit of a disconnect with our natural environment.”