For the past two months, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has been showing films . . . to potted plants.
Specifically, the flora will be seeing travel documentaries showing off glorious European skies. Will the green cinematic scheme backfire when the plants are too entertained to foresee their possible extinction?
"Our destruction of the environment is bad news for plants," the brain-teasing Keats, who also pens Wired's Jargon Watch feature, said in an e-mail interview with Wired.com "I think it's only fair that shrubs and trees know what's happening, that they realize that the cataclysm they're experiencing locally is truly global in scope." (source)
The "Strange Skies" exhibition at AC Institute sounds strange indeed, but some people play music to their plants, so who am I to judge? However, the ever-deadpan Keats (who has also tried to genetically engineer God, pass mathematical laws as municipal statutes, and copyrighted his own mind - see his Wikipedia listing) promises "Make no mistake: These documentaries are incendiary, and may be infuriating to many vegetables."
Incendiary? Really? You be the judge. . .
Those plants and their artsy-fartsy cinema: it would be navel-gazing if they had navels. Or eyeballs.
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This sounds like a really bad idea. If plants develop a desire to travel, they'll start wandering about on their own, and before we know it we'll have a triffid problem on our hands.