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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

Torched Truck Left Abandoned

The next look into haunted pastorals is demonstrated by the photo below. At first glance, the photo may seem like it is just a rusty old farm truck that is no longer used by the farmer. However, that is not the case. The photo is actually a torched truck, that has been left abandoned by its owner on a desolate back road in which the only surroundings are farmland, not a single house or barn in sight. The torched truck in this case represents the technology that has interrupted the idealized space, in this case, the beauty of untouched farmland that seems endless when viewed in-person. What makes this so hauntingly beautiful is the fact that in a place that seems so uninhabited and natural is now not so natural. “I placed a jar in Tennessee, and round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, and sprawled around, no longer wild” (Stevens, 1919). This quote comes from Wallace Stevens from his poem “Anecdote of the Jar”. In this case the torched truck relates to the jar. Both left in the uninhabited wilderness but as the surrounding wilderness grew around the man placed objects, it was no longer consider the wild. This torched car is now a machine in the garden, representing but haunting the present. Until the truck is moved or cleaned, this is considered a haunted pastoral in the present day but lives on forever through the memory of photo.






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