Visiting Professor of Art History Scott MacDonald was a presenter at “Technology and the Garden,” a symposium held May 6-7 at the Center for Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.
MacDonald organized and presented a screening focusing on various ways in which independent filmmakers have imaged gardens and imagined the Garden of Eden. His presentation included Kenneth Anger’s Eaux d’artifice, filmed in the garden at the Villa d’Este east of Rome; Carolee Schneemenn’s erotic film, Fuses; Stan Brakhage’s The Garden of Earthly Delights in which the filmstrip is used as a “furrow;” and an excerpt from Thirteen Lakes, James Benning’s meditation on American lakes.
The symposium brought an international group of scholars together to hear and discuss presentations on four topics: “Visualizing and Shaping the Landscape,” “Horticulture Technologies,” “Landscape Construction: Hydraulics, Labor, and Infrastructure” and “Emerging Technologies and Landscape Experience.”
