A project initiated by artists Michael
Alstad + Leah Lazariuk, pixelgrain is an online repository
of documents and ideas linked to the fading symbol of
the Canadian prairie grain elevator. By systematically
documenting and mapping these disappearing structures
the artists portray a parallel rural community in the
midst of transition. pixelgrain also functions as a web
portal that utilises Geographic Information Systems and
online social networks to create a participatory collaborative
document that will evolve and grow over time. www.year01.com/pixelgrain
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The lure of the local generates new solutions
to new situational problems. The pixelgrain artists are seeking
to evolve the language and purpose of their art to generate
alternate narratives, knowledge sharing and social interaction
in an expanding field using mapping technology, video and
photo documents with the thematic networks of the web. Taking
as their starting point the notion that history exists in
multiple dimensions; as memory, as document, as personal recollection,
as an event involving perception, the artists Michael Alstad
and Leah Lazariuk have developed art projects around a historically
specific, and particular phenomenon that is occurring in Canada’s
West – the disappearance of that great icon of Canadiana,
the grain elevator. The grain elevator is an immense, aesthetically
elegant and formidably majestic structure. Since their initial
appearance on the prairie horizon around 1900, the grain elevator
has been the landmark par excellence of Canada’s western
provinces. Canadian author Margaret Laurence with her typically
acute sensibility called grain elevators “the churches
of the prairies”. |
Using the evolving and adaptive technologies
of our times, pixelgrain provides a virtual space that facilitates
personal memory and accounts relating to the prairie grain elevator.
A focal point for community, and likewise a symbol of Canada’s
farm co-operative movement, of the Wheat Pool, the grain elevator
was long considered essential for furthering the well being of
community in northern countries, where social security, health
care, and other social benefits were established under the aegis
of Tommy Douglas after the lessons of the Great Depression. As
Michael Alstad comments: “The motivation for pixelgrain
stems from my interest in architecture, geography, public space
and the social implications of new technology on our experience
of place. I am interested in examining and ‘reworking’
official narratives and maps with personal recordings –
pixelgrain expands on two previous projects, Teletaxi and Geostash,
that I initiated with the Year Zero One collective. The Teletaxi
projects utilised a GPS enabled computer/touchscreen in a mobile
environment to generate video, animation, sound, and games triggered
by specific mapped locations in an urban environment. Geostash
was a project that combined a GPS/internet game with the Fluxus/Situationist
inspired art-by-instruction practice that resulted in site-responsive
performances and temporary works in public spaces throughout Toronto”
These projects seek to develop technologies that work in the direction
of site and specificity so that communities can re-establish closer
cohesion using new technologies as a significant support and awareness
structure within the broader matrix of facilities and services.
Using GPS to record the actual locations of disappearing, existing
and threatened grain elevators, these intrepid artists have assembled
a considerable repository of material, both visual and vernacular,
that reflect what the grain elevator symbolized for generations
of farm communities. Less well known is the fact that many of
our society’s most progressive aspects, notably health care,
and women’s rights as encouraged by the Suffragette movement,
were phenomena generated largely in a rural context, and the progressive
results of which have now become the bedrock of the Canadian national
imperative.
More practical information enables visitors
to learn that ten percent of the grain elevators remain. Although
they are sometimes considered fire hazards, and an insurance
concern, the surviving grain elevator is a heritage concern,
and some should be preserved if only to provide examples for
future generations of how their forbearers lived, and what
the architecture of farm life was in the days of development
in Canada’s west. Documenting the disappearing structures
has enabled artists Alstad and Lazariuk to communicate the
ways in which rural community are evolving through difficult
transitions. Some have adapted the grain elevator to other
purposes, some are still deciding, while still others have
had them demolished. Using the network of the web, pixelgrain
is evolving interactively with an audience that can access
this found history, and likewise can contribute to the many
layers of the grain elevator’s history. Geotagged videos
and pictures on Google maps and Google Earth, as well as a
series of interviews are but part of this universally accessible,
free website. Contributors to pixelgrain have the capacity
to add their own annotations about grain elevators in the
form of text, photo and video. Thus pixelgrain is an ever
expanding document about a feature of prairie society and
community that reflects the broad changes that have taken
place over recent decades. |
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The visual and vernacular landscape of Canada has changed in part
as a result of economies of scale. Just as monoculture, and the
increasing consolidation of farm properties has sought to increase
production, it has likewise forever changed the roots of our political
and social structures. Questions are raised about the supply demand
cycle, and who generates what and for whom. Canada's cooperative
movement, its labour and credit unions could conceivably vanish
in the future. And without some understanding of the forces that
are affecting our lives, we may not be as able to chart the course
of our future as a nation, and as a people.
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