The Telegarden Website

The Telegarden (1995-2004)

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin." Voltaire

Co-directors: Ken Goldberg and Joseph Santarromana

Project team: George Bekey, Steven Gentner, Rosemary Morris<br>Carl Sutter, Jeff Wiegley

Ars Electronica team: Erich Berger, Gerold Hofstadler, Thomas Steindl,<br>Gerfried Stocker

Archivist: Hannes Mayer

The Telegarden:<br>art installation that allows web users to view and interact<br>with a remote garden filled with living plants. Members can plant,<br>water, and monitor the progress of seedlings via the tender movements<br>of an industrial robot arm.

New! (Dec 2013): STL model of the Telegarden for 3D printers

New artworks and projects.

The Telegarden was developed at the University of Southern California<br>and went online in June 1995. In its first year, over 9000 members<br>helped cultivate. In September 1996, the Telegarden was moved to the<br>lobby of the Ars Electronica Center in Austria, where it remained<br>online until it was decommisioned in August 2004. The Alternate Village Square chatroom<br>remains available with archival photos and other information.

``In linking their garden to the World Wide Web and creating an<br>intuitive interface for the control of the arm and camera, the artists<br>transformed what most would consider a fit of over-engineering into a<br>subtle rumination on the nature of the Commons.''<br>-- Peter Lunenfeld, Flash Art , XXIX, 187, March 1996.

``The Telegarden creates a physical garden as an environment to stage<br>social interaction and community in virtual space. The Telegarden is<br>a metaphor for the care and feeding of the delicate social ecology of<br>the net.''<br>-- Randall Packer, San Jose Museum of Art, April 1998.

The Telegarden went online in June of 1995 and has been online<br>continuously for seven years. It currently is located in the Ars<br>Electonica Museum in Austria. Anyone can view the garden as a guest;<br>the rights to plant and water are granted to those who agree to share<br>their email addresses with other members of the cooperative. Activity<br>is recorded in logs so that the cooperative can be self-governing.

``...For the experienced gardener, the TeleGarden offers<br>a search for the sould of gardening. Sowing a<br>single, unseen and untouched seed thousands of miles away might seem<br>mechanical, but it engenders a Zen-like appreciation for the<br>fundamental act of growing. Though drained of sensory cues, planting<br>that distant seed still stirs anticipation, protectiveness, and<br>nurturing. The unmistakable vibration of the garden pulses and pulls,<br>even through a modem.''<br>-- Warren Schultz, Garden Design, Dec/January<br>1996.

``The Neolithic Revolution began sometime around 8000 B.C. when<br>humans made their first successful attempts to domesticate animals and<br>food grains.... Having learned how to assure their food supply by their<br>own efforts, they settled down in permanent village communities.''<br>-- H. W. Janson, The History of Art.

``For its engaging use of the Web, bringing together an international<br>group of strangers to explore and nourish nature in sharing a common<br>garden, the First Prize goes to the Telegarden as a<br>powerful metaphor for virtual communities.''<br>-- Jury, Festival of Independent Visual Arts (FIVA), 1995.

The Telegarden was featured on: CNN, CNet, NHK TV, Canal+ TV, NPR<br>Radio, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times, London<br>Times, Wall Street Journal, Popular Science, Byte, FlashArt, and WiRed<br>as well in books including Taschen's New Media Art, Thames and<br>Hudson's Internet Art, Thames and Hudson's Digital Art, and UC Press:<br>The Not-So-Still Life: a century of california painting and<br>sculpture.

For a sociological study of community in the Telegarden:

"Virtual Community in a Telepresence Environment," Margaret<br>L. McLaughlin, Kerry K. Osborne, and Nicole B. Ellison, in S. Jones<br>(Ed.), Virtual Culture (pp. 146-168). London: Sage Publication,<br>Inc. 1997.

Telegarden video for Tech Museum, San Jose (2004) [on YouTube]

Telegarden Official<br>Archive with Photos and Movies

Telegarden Info Page from 1996 (courtesy of Brewster's Internet Archive, thanks!)

Telegarden video for Tech Museum, San Jose (2004) [full version, 100MB]

Mpeg video of Telegarden Installation at AEC (1999) [17MB]

Very short Mpeg video clip [200 KBytes]

Another one: [200 KBytes]

Quicktime VR of installation: [350 KBytes]

Background Information

Large Images for Printing<br>Telegarden video AEC Hi Res Long NTSC (.mov) : [2.4GB]

http://goldberg.berkeley.edu | goldberg@berkeley.edu