Gardening Software

In this piece Barrat explores his interest in digital 3d scenes designed to be viewed from only one specific angle, and then doing something unexpected with them. In Gardening Software (2019) he uses outdated garden planning software in combination with landscape painting, specifically an image of British painter George Lambert’s Pastoral Scene with a Peasant Family (1753). Translated via his code and a reworking of the properties and visual language of the gardening software, Lambert’s idealised and peaceful scene undergoes fascinating changes in its translation. Although the compositions are similar, in the new image stacks of hay have become a shed, a cow has become a large rock, and pointing children have become garden gnomes.