Willful Inflorescence / Lush Damage

Willful acts are deliberate and can be harmful; human (in)actions are often withering forces among the green. Willful beings show a stubborn and determined intention to do as they want, regardless of the consequences. Flowering is a bright but quiet uprising. Lush vegetation thrives, grows vigorously, it is sumptuous, intoxicating and intoxicated.

In this Critical Media Lab in-conversation, British artist Jane Prophet will discuss the installation WILD (Willful Inflorescence / Lush Damage) Flowers, in which visitors are immersed in a larger-than-life wildflower meadow where botanical forms cut from paper catch projected videos generated by AI. Jane will discuss her approach of taking slow urban and rural walks as part of her citizen sci-art method. She sits with flowering plants, gathers photographs of them in kinship with their neighbouring plants, and logs the associated GPS data. If the plants are plentiful she takes small samples and presses them. WILD Flowers shifts to plant-size scale as an endoscopic lense rubs against flower petals and tiny botanical samples made with 35mm slides fill a wall. Time scales slide through stop motion animation and cut into plant time, weedy circadian rhythms and sensile evolutionary migrations over millennia. WILD Flowers also celebrates more-than-human wellbeing and interactions at the microscale, mutualisms and antagonisms between plants, soil, and humans that include the healing (and poisoning) power of plants.

Jane Prophet is a British artist who uses computational tools such as artificial intelligence, projection mapping, and interactive media to explore themes like ecological change and human-environment interactions. She has worked closely with scientists to create artworks that highlight the potential of these collaborations to address societal concerns. Her art is held in collections, including the Arts Council of England. She is a Professor of Art and Transforming Lives Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

She is visiting Basel to make new slides and videos with local plants that will be part of WILD Flowers when it is exhibited for the first time later this year.

https://www.janeprophet.com/