David Brooks Continuous Service Altered Daily

May 1, 2016 -  February 5, 2017 - The installation stages a metaphor. A combine harvester provides a quantifiable service: it reaps crops like grain and corn. Its individual elements and multitudinous functions are impossible to observe underneath its heavy metal shell, defying any one person’s perceptual capacity. Through an elaborate mechanization of moving parts it produces a product. Similarly, an ecosystem, representing a complex set of organisms and their environment functioning together, serves a life-sustaining purpose (clean air, food, energy, and filtered water) and is mistakenly likened to a mechanized instrument. Its interconnection to its natural environs and the greater planet is not only invisible, but promulgates a mistaken perception that these functions can be reduced to mere “services” available in perpetuity. Brooks makes a compelling visual correspondence here. He has chosen to group the machine parts into nine zones that represent nine ecosystem services that occur continuously in our biosphere and upon which we rely daily: water purification, pollination, disease regulation, decomposition, air purification, habitat formation, photosynthesis (primary production), ornamental resources, and erosion and flood control.