The Erudition is a futuristic landscape installation created by Canada-born artist Kelly Richardson. Combining aesthetics from both cinema and science fiction, the piece is a series of three high-definition screens on which neon blue, holographic trees blow in a fake wind. An eerie silence is occasionally interrupted by the electronic flicker of the trees popping on and off of the screen in random patterns. Visitors can stand in the dark room for hours, pondering the desolate landscape of this fictional planet where there are very few signs of life.
The real and fictional combinations of nature offer a glance into Richardson’s imagination as visitors reflect upon the meditative installation. The high-tech, manipulated scene evokes thoughts about our future and what the environment could be like in our wildest dreams. According to one review, Richardson’s works “ask us to imagine what future mankind can shape for itself and the planet when environmental meltdown seems, to many, to be all but unavoidable. Many of her best-known works create a vision of a world on the brink of apocalypse.”
