A while back I posted a few pictures of farmers in Japan who created art in rice fields. Pretty low-tech stuff, but very beautiful. Now I come across this unusual form of land art.
Completely different in style and really different in how the art is made-really completely different.
The group work is called the Landprint Project and I came across this on Kitchen Budapest:
The aim of the Landprint project is to reproduce subtle patterns and photos by combining various species of plants with programmed robotics.
Plants and flowers that spawn seem to make continuous patterns with their various colours and shades seen from a distance. With the use of programmed robotics for the planting and cutting of plants, we can manipulate the evolving patterns, to render photo-like, delicate images.
[ A grass art rendering (courtesy Kitchen Budapest). ]
Wow, that is amazing. So amazing that in this day and age most would say that’s photo shopped, it can’t be real. Then I go on down through the article and I see that this beautiful work is(to be?) created with my hand held blender . . . no way!
[ Sure looks like a blender I use. ( Courtesy Kitchen Budapest) ]
There is a decent explanation of how this machine is designed and built. However there was no good explanation of the type of grass, and or other plants in the field. No mention if a specific type of grass was necessary.
This form of land art beats the simplistic/geometric crop circles, and like the author of the article I think this will become very popular and very commercial. If it can be done in a realistic time period.
Speaking of time period, none was mentioned in creating this particular work of art. I’d like to know the time frame needed to make this happen.
Now the Important Stuff:
Okay; help me out here, is the above image actually real? Take a look at this part of the article:
Current state
With the collaboration of a professional, we have studied different types of grass and their planting methods. We have also examined how a traditional lawnmower should be transformed so that it produces the desired effect with the help of the hand-mixers and the built-in program.
The first prototype can cut a line of text into the grass. We can cut also patterns or pictures, but at the current state the device cannot automatically assure that the successive lines will fit together in the resulted image.
The illustration of the header image is an artist’s rendering.
Let’s take another look at that last line:
The illustration of the header image is an artist’s rendering.
Does that mean what I think it means? That this is their goal . . . to create images like the above? What have they really done? Have they done anything? Or have I gone off the deep end and I am totally wrong.
The other important reason I bring this up is this. There are two other websites/blogs(both with big followings) that posted on this image and accepted it as real. I think they missed that last paragraph.
One more thing-robotics. The continuing development in machines to improve the quality of life, to remove labor issues from man, to free us for more creative pursuits is awesome. So much exciting stuff going on out there in the World. It’s a very exciting time to be alive.
I just have to keep an eye on my blender next time I concoct some weird drink.
The Whispering Crane Institute 
It seems entirely possible to do the dot-matrix type of land art that appears to be proposed here. The lawn-mower-brush just needs to be indexed correctly on each pass of the canvas – I mean pasture/field/lawn. GPS technology may be coming close to giving the “paint brush” a mind of it’s own.
It also seems that if a rendering is a portrayal, depiction, picture, image, portrait, reproduction or description of something then the image in or of the lawn could be a rendering of a rendering.
I can see it now. Home owners, farmers, and sheep herders becoming artists. Land will increase in value as advertisements are sold for air and space travelers. Who needs bill boards on the highway when you have a 1,000 acres.
Just had lunch today with my brother-in-law (A Farmer/potential painter but not advertiser)
GPS technology has arrived for would be painter/lawnscapers. Positioning is now down to sub-inch accuracy.
Rick,
You now have the possibility of being known as the framer of famous art. Your landscape designes now have the potential of being the frames of soon to be famous artists. Just one more thing to add to your portfolio.