Landscape with Olive Trees

Landscape with Olive Trees is an interactive landscape painting.

It centers on the influence of digital technologies on the perception and representation of the natural landscape. Alongside perspective systems, religion, social and political context, technology has acted over time as a filter in relationship to the natural landscape, generating patterns of interpretation and representation. Painting is a significant resource for understanding the role of technology in a specific historical context. Over the last few decades the process of painting shifted, reflecting a blurred boundary between disciplines, incorporating new material elements and the technology of its time. Digital technologies and the experience in virtual worlds are reshaping social practices, perception, creativity, and the transformations that the concept of painting has undergone are an expression of these changes.

The composition of the work is outlined by 3D scans of old olive trees - including a tree that is over two thousand years old - from Zakynthos Island in Greece and a 3D modeled painting with digitized canvas textures. The landscape painted on the canvas was created by extracting satellite topographic data from the same location.

The environment is described in the intro flythrough, after which the viewer/player is placed on the canvas amidst fragments of trees that are floating around the static two thousand years old olive tree trunk. The visitor is able to walk on the canvas interacting with the environment and play a video during which the overall composition of the work can be altered.