Mycorrhizal Materialities
In the textile series ‘Mycorrhizal Materialities’ I have trained GANs on 100 of my hand drawings of Australian fungi. The GANs have then responded with 1000s of new generated images, some of which I have then embroidered onto abstract digital prints of machine generated textures. This work is an exploration of a co-creative relationship between human and machine intelligence - using the mycorrhiza as a metaphor for an entangled and generative creative process. Human and machine intelligence exchange creative offerings like nutrients, evolving new generations of ideation.
I am interested in co-creative relations for working with machine learning models as well as the ways in which machine imagined imagery might connect us to the broader lives of critters and code. I am curious about material metaphors for working with machine learning. Presently much ML emerges from deterministic and instrumental metaphors of resource extraction (data mining), uncontrolled emergence (explosions of intelligence) and competition (AI arms race). The works in this project consider ML through a relational, material lens with the textile outcomes providing a metaphorical embodiment of this lens. The relations between human and machine intelligences are interwoven, producing an agential fabric.
See my paper on this project under Research
Mycorrhizal Materialities was first shown physically at Melbourne Design Week 2022 at the RMIT Design Archives from 17-27 March. It was first shown digitally as part of Radiant Pavillion in September 2021. It was also 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 2021. It was also shown at Haus of Vovo in January 2023 in New Norfolk, Tasmania. A reworked version was shown at the 2023 International Symposium for Electronic Art ISEA and exhibited at I.E.S.A Gallery in Paris, France in May 2023.
Back to Recent Projects
I am interested in co-creative relations for working with machine learning models as well as the ways in which machine imagined imagery might connect us to the broader lives of critters and code. I am curious about material metaphors for working with machine learning. Presently much ML emerges from deterministic and instrumental metaphors of resource extraction (data mining), uncontrolled emergence (explosions of intelligence) and competition (AI arms race). The works in this project consider ML through a relational, material lens with the textile outcomes providing a metaphorical embodiment of this lens. The relations between human and machine intelligences are interwoven, producing an agential fabric.
See my paper on this project under Research
Mycorrhizal Materialities was first shown physically at Melbourne Design Week 2022 at the RMIT Design Archives from 17-27 March. It was first shown digitally as part of Radiant Pavillion in September 2021. It was also 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 2021. It was also shown at Haus of Vovo in January 2023 in New Norfolk, Tasmania. A reworked version was shown at the 2023 International Symposium for Electronic Art ISEA and exhibited at I.E.S.A Gallery in Paris, France in May 2023.
Back to Recent Projects
