Wasteland is an interactive mixed media installation that foretells a possible future of depleted resources where one’s human strength is the only means to power up illusory worlds. The installation addresses the issues of disposable culture, the objectification of nature, and our propensity to live a life of illusion. Wasteland employs the language of contemporary video art aesthetics both to seduce its visitors and cause them to re-examine their roles as participatory members in a world at risk.- Virginia Valdes ​ Abundant and cheap energy is what fuels overpopulation and sprawl. Consider a place where one can no longer send their waste to a dump or count on the prosthetic aides of industrial civilization but must find ways to accommodate his trash within his own personal habitat. Paving, urban sprawl, and overdevelopment have exhausted our resources to the point where our own human strength is the only energy available to power up what remains of our virtual worlds. Wasteland attempts to show how a human habitat filled with non-recyclable and non-degradable material goods not only inexorably eliminates others and ultimately all life, but increases the artificial and cultural divide between humans and their biological environment. THE INSTALLATION Take a Ride into the future: A motion sensor detects museum goers as they pass an arched entrance way. Upon entering, a woman’s voice is heard welcoming viewers to Wasteland, an environment devoid of biological life where at its center heteroclite objects protrude from a large heap of candy colored plastic garbage. A stationary bicycle sits directly in front of the large heap facing four black screened monitors stuck inside the landfill. The viewer/participant must sit on the bike and start pedaling in order to power up the monitors and virtually connect with nature. As the viewer begins pedaling a loop of seven videos play each touching upon the relationships we create with our natural environment in a variety of ways ranging from a sultry invitation to get in touch with mother nature to a psychotic women dressed in a pink and gold sequenced gown digging up her potatoes in a celebratory frenzy. To the right of the bicycle a sign reads “do not exceed 12 volts or you will fry the system and lose your illusory connection to nature”. A red strobe-light flashes while a piercing siren goes off warning the bicyclist they are about to exceed recommended voltage and must slow down their pace. Once the viewer stops pedaling the video images disappear and we are left once again looking at a pile of junk/art in the corner of the room. There is a balance the bicyclist must reach in the speed and strength of his pedaling in order to keep the system operating and playing scenes of nature without actually shorting and burning out all the monitors.