PICNIC 08 – De Variegata Setup

When I was walking through the Picnic event area where the only free access tent (the E-Art Dome) was situated, there was nothing going there yet. So I walked through this big white tent and saw, between all the computer screens where multiple multimedia experiences could be  gained, a little garden, made by mister Frank Bruggeman. As I didn’t find the rest of the projects in the tent very interesting I decided to figure out what this thing was doing in this place and who the owner was. But when I wanted to ask somebody who seemed to be in charge of one of the projects in the tent, another act began, involving a woman moving (or dancing) through the whole tent and a guy holding a mask in front of his face with the dancing ladies face on it. As I could’t disturb this (weird) appearance and ask somebody about the plants I decided this was all to arty for me and I wanted to get off of this event area.  I looked up the name of this mini garden in cyberspace and this link provided me some information, but not quite enough. It says the creater is fascinated by the way humans interact with nature, making plants which would’t survive in the wild but do in our glasshouses. On the site of mister Bruggeman himself I found some more information, he is an artist, doing lots of things with flora and interiour. The reason why his Variegata set-up was situated on a multimedia event still isn’t quite clear to me. Is it because we have to be reminded about the environment while praising all these new techniques? Or is it just something to fill up the tent? Or is there a deeper meening for this art to appear here?