Digital flora & fauna: things that seem like one thing but also another thing. Mimetic copies of real world objects that have taken on a second life in the digital sphere, become cyberbodies, embraced new ways of being. We look for the familiar as much as we move closer, fascinated by the alien in the everyday.
Finnish social scientist Karl-Erik Michelsen once said, “When factories were established in nineteenth century Finland, they were hidden behind trees and bushes. This way, the machine was placed hidden within the natural landscape-in the ‘garden’.” A garden is, however naturally articulated, cultivated by human hands: it is as “artificial” as a machine. Both are concept-objects on equal terms with each other with their own hidden vitalities and mysteries. They exist because of us, with us, and in spite of us. Somewhere inside, a world stirs, and recedes. As creators, what are our cultural and moral obligations towards these realities - and do we have a right to stake a claim over them? It is in our correlationist nature to classify things within a seemingly “natural” hierarchy. Can we conceive of an alien one?
ROLE –
Art direction, lighting & texturing, styleframes.
TOOLS – Cinema4D, Houdini