Unseen Flora is a series of works that offer a novel perspective on the world of fantastical botanical illustrations. Through surreal representation of the natural kingdom, the work focuses on the visionary practice of four fictional British scientists and artists: Charlotte Bancroft, Beatrice Hastings, Edmund Thorne and Theodore Winslow.
The series, with a strong conceptual focus, has as its core the exploration of the idea of post-truth, contextualised in the contemporary digital age where the boundaries between real and virtual, natural and artificial, seem to become more and more blurred. Especially after the sudden influx of innovative technologies led by AI language models and image generation systems, the notion of truth has become even more arbitrary, always hidden behind a thin veil of plausibility and verisimilitude.
Unseen Flora stands at the interplay between these areas: the collection explores these concepts through four characters whose stories, while fictional, appear entirely believable to fresh, naive eyes. With deep influences from other research strands, such as Surreal Botany, and pioneering illustrators such as Ernst Haeckel and Luigi Serafini, the series of works offers us an unprecedented glimpse into imaginary botanical dimensions.
Unseen Flora was first born in 2023 as a generative digital collection for Bright Moments Artist in Residence programme. For the occasion, it was initially planned to work with Artificial Botany. However, for technical complexities and conceptual purposes, we designed an alternative version of the work which later became so distant from the initial concept that we decided to completely divide the two series, despite the common focus on botany. With Unseen Flora, in fact, the series took an unprecedented turn: developing through the stories, lives and creations of the four fictional botanists, it seeks to propose a reflection on the concept of truth and post-truth concerning the world of new technologies and, in particular, to AI language and image generators.
In this specific context, the perception of truth is shifting, seemingly aligning more closely with the notion of plausibility than concrete reality. For instance, post-truth indicates a deeply-rooted tendency to validate an assertion based on the public’s emotions and feelings, without any concrete analysis of the actual truthfulness of the facts being told. This tendency also taps into the concept of confirmation bias—the inclination to favour, believe, and recall information that reinforces one’s existing beliefs or values—which, if amplified on a global scale, may significantly influence and shape public opinion.
These concepts become even more relevant in the age of AI, now that models such as Chat GPT are regularly accessible: these systems leverage a precise human perception of the world that results from the initial, human-made training set. AI systems continuously generate plausible answers, post-truth realities that tap into what is commonly believed to be logical and credible, but not necessarily true. It is at this new intersection between these ever-evolving concepts of post-truth, plausibility and falsehood that we set the stage for Unseen Flora: a series that is founded on familiar but somehow uncanny botany illustrations, on plausible but fictional histories and personalities.
In its inaugural presentation, the exhibition featured video pieces from the series alongside a thoughtfully curated collection of vintage objects and artefacts, each speculatively narrating the stories of the four botanists whose research was the starting point for our own works. A key aspect of the exhibition—and the series as a whole—was the deliberate absence of any explicit indication that these characters were fictional. On the contrary, the whole experience aimed to explore those blurred boundaries between truth and inaccuracy, in an attempt to highlight the dynamics that shape our information perception.
As mentioned, Unseen Flora involves a shift in Artificial Botany creative process: the past iterations of the work have always taken as a starting point authentic botanical illustrations, which were then reimagined through the lens of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). The central focus has always been exploring the transformative journey from natural forms to artificial ones, mirroring the organic morphing of real seedlings. Our tasks have always been confined to taking something already created, with a life of its own, and reinterpreting it through unprecedented techniques and looks. With Unseen Flora, however, we move backwards: instead of focusing on the outcomes of human-driven research, we delve into the lives of the botanists themselves, exploring their hypothetical perspectives on the natural world. An approach that allows us to generate unparalleled outputs, that could serve as potential starting points for further research and interpretations.
An essential element that shaped the visual research for the project was the exploration of works of illustrators and botanists who create unreal, imaginary worlds. Among those who inspired us most are the renowned Ernst Haeckel and Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus. Haeckel (1834–1919) was a German biologist, naturalist, and artist best known for his intricate, artistic representations of marine life and other organisms. The Codex Seraphinianus, in contrast, is a whimsical book that has garnered increasing attention since its publication in 1981. It features a broad array of subjects, from biology and architecture to art and technology, all presented eccentrically and unconventionally, captivating readers with a unique view of the world.
A4 Chengdu, 2024
Bright Moments London, 2023
A4 Chengdu, 2024