All Watched Over By Machines of Infinite Loving Grace
On coming across the "Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch in Madrid in 2009, Mark Alexander noted, as many others before him had, that the central panel of this triptych was seemingly devoid of any religious significance. Indeed, the figures seemed to be happily playing, often engaging in very base acts in a disturbingly childlike way. It reminded him of the poem by Richard Brautigan, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace," an imagined world where humans' only task was to play happily with machines. Alexander's recreation of Bosch's masterpiece takes on a darker meaning: the figures, heavy with age, start to wrinkle and darken, rather than living forever, they start to die. He adds the word "infinite" to Brautigan's original title to add weight to the power of the rise of technology.
