Impossible Evolutions
‘Impossible Evolutions’ uses Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) trained on datasets of endangered Australian butterflies and wildflowers to imagine new iterations. These ‘impossible’ machine-imagined evolutions gesture to the futures we face as biodiversity decreases: there will be no further generations or modulations of these species. These works draw on recent awareness around ‘The Insect Crisis’ where a number of short and longer term studies have shown that the biomass of insects is the most rapidly reducing of all lifeforms on the planet - a biomass which is inextricably entangled in the broader ecosystems of plant and animal life, including within the food security of humans. The images have been assembled and woven into 3 tapestries that locate the pollinators within their entangled ecosystems. The works try to leverage the unexpected generative capacity of GANs to provide material outcomes that might deepen our connection to and understanding of the natural world.
The project unfolds relational ways to consider the emerging entanglements of human and machine intelligences by leveraging the stories of vulnerable organisms and the language of textiles. The generated images are composed into three textile weavings of place showing the interconnected lives that generate each creature’s ecosystem. Each story becomes a fabric both literal and metaphorical, with this ‘textillic thinking’ offering speculative vantage points for approaching practice with ML models. What kinds of worlds are we creating and caring about? By reflecting on the interweaving of conditions that has disrupted each ecological niche, space is opened to think about unseen sensory worlds (Richmond Birdwing butterfly), symbiotic exchange (Bulloak Jewel butterfly) and stewardship of the land (Sunshine Diuris orchid).
This textillic thinking interweaves creativity, collaboration and care: conditions which are foregrounded in textile-making practices and disrupted in each creature’s ecological story. In this way, the project offers material language for discussing the processes and effects of ML, while emphasising the responsibility of the human in their design. I call this a 'Texologic Praxis' and this is becoming my way to frame my design practice with ML.
Impossible Evolutions was first shown at Assembly Point, Narrm Australia between August 1-31st 2022, and the development was supported by an Australia Council for the Arts grant in 2022. It was also shown at Wild Hope at the RMIT Design Hub Gallery as part of Now or Never Festval September 2023. It will also show at ISEA 2024 at the QUT Art Museum in Brisbane/Meanjin, QLD.
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The project unfolds relational ways to consider the emerging entanglements of human and machine intelligences by leveraging the stories of vulnerable organisms and the language of textiles. The generated images are composed into three textile weavings of place showing the interconnected lives that generate each creature’s ecosystem. Each story becomes a fabric both literal and metaphorical, with this ‘textillic thinking’ offering speculative vantage points for approaching practice with ML models. What kinds of worlds are we creating and caring about? By reflecting on the interweaving of conditions that has disrupted each ecological niche, space is opened to think about unseen sensory worlds (Richmond Birdwing butterfly), symbiotic exchange (Bulloak Jewel butterfly) and stewardship of the land (Sunshine Diuris orchid).
This textillic thinking interweaves creativity, collaboration and care: conditions which are foregrounded in textile-making practices and disrupted in each creature’s ecological story. In this way, the project offers material language for discussing the processes and effects of ML, while emphasising the responsibility of the human in their design. I call this a 'Texologic Praxis' and this is becoming my way to frame my design practice with ML.
Impossible Evolutions was first shown at Assembly Point, Narrm Australia between August 1-31st 2022, and the development was supported by an Australia Council for the Arts grant in 2022. It was also shown at Wild Hope at the RMIT Design Hub Gallery as part of Now or Never Festval September 2023. It will also show at ISEA 2024 at the QUT Art Museum in Brisbane/Meanjin, QLD.
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