"Artificial Botany" by fuse* art studio in the United States
The Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco presents a new version of Artificial Botany, the project by fuse* art studio exploring the latent expressive capacity of botanical illustrations through the use of machine learning algorithms.
The exhibition opened on May 11 in the new spaces of Innovit and will run until September 1st.
The audio-visual installation created by fuse* draws from public domain archive images of illustrations by some of the greatest artists of the genre, that became the material for a particular machine learning system which is able to recreate new artificial images with morphological elements extremely similar to the original images but with details and features that seem to bring out a real human representation. The machine re-elaborates the content by creating a new language, capturing the information and artistic qualities of man and nature.
Artificial Botany was first created in 2020, but is an ongoing project. It combines digital and analogue prints with video installations, sound environments with specimens of ancient herbaria, natural printed silkscreens alongside with immersive audio-visual installations.
The exhibition in San Francisco offers a comprehensive look on the series and includes, between others, images from the famous herbarium by Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, one of the oldest in the world – granted by the University Library and the Botanical Garden of the University of Bologna in 2022 –, and the latest and still unreleased series generated from artificial illustrations.