/ Some weird scientific artworks I want to talk about /

[Selfsurprise]

 

Whilst browsing through my shelves in order to help an artsy friend recently, I stumbled upon a book I purchased several years ago and forgotten about. Pictured above, Stephen Wilson's Art + Science Now: How scientific research and technological innovation are becoming key to 21st-century aesthetics is full of stuff that could potentially prove inspiring any budding speculative futurologist and sci-fi enthusiast. It's primarily an illustrated guidebook of both individuals and groups working within visual/conceptual art, biology, physics, chemistry, technology, computer programming, and other multidisciplinary fields where the borders between art and science start becoming nebulous and ill-defined.

 

I figured I'll select one artwork from the book that catches my eye at any given time and offer it up for your interest and perusal, as well as quote Wilson's short but succinct summaries of each piece. I've wanted to make some kind of art criticism thread for a while and I've always restrained myself from making an explicit "modern art" topic, because I'm not sure how interested many here would be in that subject. The thing about these artworks however is that you needn't be versed in heavy-going art theory or be familiar contemporary artists to appreciate some of the thought-provoking ideas that influence and inspire them. At least I hope that's how it will work! ;p

The first artwork from the book I want to talk about was created by Polish bio-artist Mateusz Herczka.

 

• Mateusz Herczka, Life Support Systems: Vanda (2005)
  
• Computers control the care of Vanda orchids and monitor their life processes. The image shows eight plants with sensors and computer-controlled lights. As the project website explains, 'The goal is to create a virtual organism ... which can exist indefinitely, kept alive inside computer media in the form of a datastructure ... After the live individual is disconnected, its virtual counterpart will continue to generate signals which mimic the patterns of the original.' - Stephen Wilson

 

The thing I find fascinating about this one is the idea a decidedly non-literal entity mimicking the processes of a pre-existing and unavoidably literal plant. Is the "datastructure" referred to in Wilson's description more like a digital clone of the orchids? Or does the collective input of all eight orchids result in something that is unique and distinct from the plants? Anybody else fascinated by the idea of a speculative artificial lifeform behaving more like a flower than the more anthropomorphised android and cyborg stand-ins common to science fiction? Finally, does the notion of a speculative artificial intelligence generated (possibly accidentally) from a network of plants or other non-human biological medium make the concept of A.I. more alien and outré?