The TeleGarden is an art installation that allows web users to view and interact with a remote garden filled with living plants. Members can plant, water, and monitor the progress of seedlings via the tender movements of an industrial robot arm.
``In linking their garden to the World Wide Web and creating an intuitive interface for the control of the arm and camera, the artists transformed what most would consider a fit of over-engineering into a subtle rumination on the nature of the Commons.'' -- Peter Lunenfeld, Flash Art , XXIX, 187, March 1996.
``The Telegarden creates a physical garden as an environment to stage social interaction and community in virtual space. The Telegarden is a metaphor for the care and feeding of the delicate social ecology of the net.'' -- Randall Packer, San Jose Museum of Art, April 1998.
The Telegarden went online in June of 1995 and has been online continuously for seven years. It currently is located in the Ars Electonica Museum in Austria. Anyone can view the garden as a guest; the rights to plant and water are granted to those who agree to share their email addresses with other members of the cooperative. Activity is recorded in logs so that the cooperative can be self-governing.