20x200

Moore Estates (West) by Matthew Moore

It’s easy to get lost in the Digital Age—being the spunky, e-commerce art site that we are, all of us here at 20x200 are constantly immersed in the imaginary world that is the Internet. But that’s exactly it: we’re so busy deteriorating our vision with megapixels and LCD backlighting that we regularly forget to stop, go outside and take a breath of fresh air (and maybe even look at a tree or two). These worlds, though, are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and artists like edition-maker Matthew Moore are finding ways to merge new technology with Mother Nature. The result: moments from the natural world, usually transient, are captured, recorded and saved.

Moore, whose 20x200 editions pay tribute to and analyze modern American agriculture, captures on film the ephemeral nature of, well, nature. In another project, he manipulates time-lapse photography to record the lifespans of cultivated plants around the world. Moore is working to receive an United States Artists fellowship to continue his work, which he has titled the Digital Farm Collective. In his introduction to the project, he writes:

“Using time-lapse photography, I have begun the process of filming everything I grow, and [I'm] inviting other farmers to do the same. The arranged short films show a single production cycle of each plant/tree.”

Moore plans to use the footage he captures and edits to create short films that will “educate consumers on the produce they purchase by showing the growing process as it happens in the field, reconnecting them to the land and time-based concepts integral to the agricultural process.”

Read more about the project or make a pledge to the Digital Farm Collective to support Moore and his goal of producing a “digital film herbarium,” which will house footage that documents the life cycles of crops grown by farmers worldwide. The deadline for pledging is Friday, May 13th. You can also view his editions, Moore Estates (West) and Moore Estates (detail), and read Jen’s introduction to the series.

And just in time for Earth Day, we’re offering you the chance to get a regularly $50 11”x14” of Matt’s print for just $30, for the next eight hours only (until 8 p.m. EST).

Be Realistic Demand the Impossible by Carrie Marill

Also available for $30 (today only) is Matt’s wife (and fellow 20x200 artist) Carrie Marill’s Utopian edition, Be Realistic Demand the Impossible. To create this print, Carrie scanned an image from a French classroom “visual aide” from the late 1950s and updated it with modern drawings to “reflect current events that relate to the state of our environment and how humans anthropomorphize the planet.” See if you can spot all of the out-of-place-and-time objects, and read more about Carrie’s work in Jen’s newsletter.