Blossom Branch 2020, displaced from lab to bedroom, was an exploration of structures. While Meg pruned her flower petals to focus on the other working parts of the skeleton, COVID-19 was hiding those who could work remotely, to reveal workers whom are crucial to running our society
Leading on from a previous piece - Beyond the Depths, 2019, which was delving into value, human transcendence and flower symbolism, Blossom Branch was an evolving thought. Conceptually, threads were traced from her dissertation written on the lack of care for maintenance workers (people crucial to our structures online and offline, yet often outsourced hence lacking rights and pay). These thoughts sewn through to production while looking at the NHS heralded, clapped on thursdays, and yet actually being treated similarly to the maintenance workers, lacking care and pay. The BLM movement tied the final bow, letting britain's racist past illuminate its roots still clinging in our structures today. The piece gently attempts to rebalance the power structure of the flower, giving each working part a voice, while ruminating on wider social inbalances that go beyond this desk.
Blossom Branch, produced in a bedroom, relied on social ties and local environment to finish. Sourcing twigs from local parks, posted cogs from 3D printers and borrowed tools from fathers. Conversing solely through zoom video calls, the plane of interaction had flipped - our curated zoom windows revealing snippets of physical remote life, commuting to a virtual space. Will our events and exhibitions be effected by this? Will curation from now on be with physical and virtual in mind?
Kinetic sculptures not only inspire wonder, in the movement of the inanimate, but also bridge technology and with art. The possibility of mimicking physical and natural processes with creative technology is exciting. Imagine a mechanical flower, beautiful and actively photosynthesising. Imagine its wire skeleton adorned with a chorophyll skin, AR filters displaying sensor data. what a full horizon that we look out upon. So much change to come.

About the artist

Megan Benson is a practising artist and creative technologist looking to collaborate more in mechanical sculpture and digital tools that reinterpret our environments. She created the navigational online exhibition space using aframe. Find her through her website and instagram. To see the full documentation journey of Blossom Branch, go here

Remote Latency

Five graduating artists of Goldsmiths Digital Arts Computing Bsc display their work in an unanticipated context. Together with Arebyte Gallery’s AOS they present the online exhibition REMOTE LATENCY Remote Latency deals with the implications and challenges of digital distance and remoteness. It takes approximately X milliseconds for your computer to receive the transfer of data after the click on your mousepad. What is lost along the way? What ghosts are hiding in the latent space? As artists, we incorporate tools that are reinterpreting our environments, offering the content to the viewer behind the screen, over welcoming them into a physical space. We respond to the social shift in interaction that the pandemic has induced, joining the crowd of algorithms that compete for your attention, as an annoying pop up ad infecting your screen like the virus we’re still dealing with. It exists in the seam, the data crumbling between the lines.