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About Haunted Pastoral and the Machines in the Garden

"It doesn’t take a culture critic to tell you that nature is one of those concepts that is really difficult to define: many of us likely regard it as just one of those things that you know when you see it” (O’Brien, 2010).When we think of nature, the first thing that comes to mind is the peaceful wilderness, animals scattered throughout the untouched lands that they call their homes. The protectiveness of the blooming trees that provide shade and shelter on hot or stormy days. What we don’t realize is that nature expands far beyond that. Nature can also represent the farmland or the aquatic waterways. What makes nature so hauntingly fascinating is the haunted pastorals that are hidden in plain sight. To further expand on the meaning of haunted pastoral: the idealized spaces that become interrupted by technology. The growth of technology can be seen everywhere within the nature landscapes and creates the presence of a machine in the garden. These machines are visible to the human eye, but we may block out the objects as they are not what we want to see when we view nature. The blog posts below will go through and explain how technology haunts the pastoral land and creates a machine in the garden in various ways that you may not have imagined. Technology is more than just computerized processes.

Mar 31, 20221 min read

Hauntings of the Past

The first look into the machine in the garden as it relates to the haunted pastoral is replicated by the photo below. The photo shown was taken just down the road from where I live and tells the tale of advancement of technology through the years where the tractor now rests, as it rusts away slowly every day and is now considered a machine in the garden. The rusty old piece of farm equipment is now incorporated into the landscape and obstructs the natural view of nature. It is now associated to the haunted pastoral. Although some may view it as a rusty tractor, the photo also illustrates how the past haunts the present and opens a window into the future. The past technology that lays to rest in the landscape is comparable to the advancements and innovations that have been made in the farming industry and where they can continue to grow. Current farming machines are now all computerized with high tech technology that may have seemed impossible in the past when the tractor in the photo was considered “high tech”, but now anything seems possible for the future.




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