virtualpasture7

Because good farmers rotate crops The Beanfield (2006-2008) is now a pasture. Sheep and cows once grazed the OSU campus grounds. Horses pulled delivery wagons to classrooms, auditoriums, and dormitories. Now, except for pigeons, squirrels, rats, cats, raccoons, and dogs, animals are mostly absent here. The Virtual Pasture (in progress) reanimates the central campus landscape with a starter flock of Shetland sheep, raised off-site but presented through images transmitted live to an outdoor video monitor at the Wexner Center. The project entertains such questions as Where, when, and how do we encounter farm animals now? And, How might we reestablish contact with those living creatures with which we still share deep mutual dependence, but which we have made invisible in our daily life?

So, why look at animals?

"[Because] the eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal's look be recognized as familiar. The animal scrutinizes him across the narrow abyss of non-comprehension. This is why man can surprise the animal. Yet the animal-even if domesticated—even if domesticated—can also surprise the man."
John Berger, About Looking