Index

Immortal Nature

With Vanessa V(ozzo) and Mariapaola Infuso

Pastis, Turin, Italy.

20 June 2024

Immortal Nature is an audiovisual installation that connects a plant, to be precise an alocasia, with an artificial intelligence system. The installation explores a potential future scenario where the organic and the inorganic collaborate. Artificial intelligence simulates an ultra-innovative genetic technique that aims to speculatively modify the plant’s DNA to make it immortal.
The work explores new scenarios and new forms of power in the field of biotechnology in which the machine is able to intervene on the genetic sequences of living beings in an automated manner.
In the installation, artificial intelligence monitors both the environment in which the plant is placed and its state of health. By examining the data collected through the sensors, it generates new DNA sequences with which they replace the genes considered harmful to the plant. The two monitors on the sides of the alocasia show processes that cannot be observed with the naked eye. It is thus possible to view the vital parameters of the plant, the problems found within its organism and the solutions implemented by the machine to re-establish the ideal condition of immortality. A real-time generative soundscape based on the slow tropisms of the plant and the genetic codes produced by the machine describes the relationship between the organic and the inorganic.