| In an exhibit at the CLUI, Los Angeles, called
On the Farm: Live Stock Footage by Livestock, farm animals showed
us their point of view, through wireless video cameras installed
temporarily on their head and necks by virtuoso animal and plant
videographer Sam Easterson. Easterson’s technology enables
a cow, a pig, a goat, a chicken, a sheep, and a horse to guide
us around their world; what they look at, what catches their attention,
how they move through space, and how they relate to one another,
on the farm.
Sam Easterson’s enterprise, called “Animal,
Vegetable, Video” endeavors to create the world’s
largest library of video footage that has been captured from the
perspective of animals, plants and the environments they inhabit.
The company creates its video footage by outfitting wild animal
and plants with ‘helmet-mounted’ video cameras. It
also installs micro video cameras deep inside animal and plant
habitats. All video footage that Animal, Vegetable, Video collects
becomes part of its extensive video library.
Though Easterson has put cameras on everything
from armadillos to scorpions, he had to acquire additional footage
of farm animals for the Center’s exhibit, in order to be
able to represent the principal animals you would find on a farm.
“Since the Center is not a natural history-based organization,
we had to see Sam’s work in the context of land use, and
the animal husbandry idea was where we found a common theme,”
said CLUI curator Sarah Simons.
Sam Easterson was invited to present his work at
the Center as part of the Independent Interpreter program, where
unique documentarians and archivists of the landscape are given
a forum to show and talk about their work at the Center. On December
6, Mr. Easterson gave a lecture about his work, and took questions
from a capacity audience at the Center’s exhibit space in
Los Angeles. |
