constellations of marine threads stick, glue and merge together, their silhouettes intricately, indeterminately botanical & fleeting. What do aquatic flowers look like? 

{wisps of marine flora}

As we process stimuli, we imbue meaning on the patterns that emerge: noise becomes signal, the experience becomes information. As the cultural divide we have built between the physical and digital is eroded by digital life, what patterns do these new denizens experience, what forms do their meaning take, what information do they perceive, also of us? 
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generative sound model trained on frog calls from Panama
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By: Itzel Yard / @ixshells & Sofia Crespo
Special thanks: Alan Ixba & Stefano Rosso

{Ruidos_emergentes}

The manner in which birds have most commonly been recorded before, and even after, the advent of the camera has a curious, static quality: birds are often seen from the side, at ninety degrees to the observer, posed on a branch, plumage neatly visible. Accompanying these observations, the observer frequently added details of spread wings and tail feathers, which clearly were seen post-mortem in most cases. 
Anyone lucky enough to see a bird's song made fleetingly tangible in the air by sub-zero temperatures knows how fleeting most encounters can be, flitting, darting, soaring and signalling at breathtaking speeds. This stark contrast illuminates just how the manner in which we depict is shaped by our limits of perception, as it simultaneously traces the contours of how we in turn perceive the world. We cannot see, let alone render their hurried forms, instead, we patiently await the right moments to capture them when they are still enough for us to actually not just see form, but also detail. 

Depictions of the avian are that of a shared stillness.


shared moments of observation

As we grow, we expand our knowledge and experience of the world beyond the small, familiar beginnings we call home. As we learn, we begin to see the similarities and differences in the myriad species of our more-than-human coinhabitants, their diverse adaptations mirror our own differences in the environments we create, choose or are raised within. As you step into the world around you, look closely and you will find so many ways of being to delight in.

Ways of Being

There’s an ephemeral nature to diving: we can only capture one experience at a time: the synchronicity of all the elements, conditions, and creatures that together create that specific moment. With this series, I wanted to recreate that aspect of randomness and presence encountered when photographing underwater. Each photograph is perfect in its own way, despite imperfections, as it serves as a snapshot or testimony of an instant. 

Whilst underwater there is a rush to visually absorb and remember each texture as future inspiration, to make the most, before returning to the safety of terrestrial life. I often spend hours after a dive reflecting on the visual patterns I encountered, attempting to comprehend the colours and textures that exist at various aquatic depths, my brain in turn creating an amalgam of these. These amalgam memories were articulated through custom algorithms and self-trained GANs, live generating in-browser a fragment of an irreplaceable moment.

Time after vessels #15

Merging_Dreams_8745

*Critically Extant* is a project that explores just how little we know about the natural world by testing the limits of the data openly available to us in our digital lives. To achieve this, AI algorithms were trained on millions of open source images of nature and some ten thousand species. The resulting models were then used to generate visual representations of species that are critically endangered, yet have little or no online presence specially on social media The goal of this was to not only trace the edges of our knowledge, but to also explore how we can create feedback loops in the digital that can be positive for the natural world.
<ReadMore>The project was inaugurated as an Instagram exhibition, exploring how the pieces can become part of our daily digital intake of content as a means of creating awareness and potentially engagement on behalf of the species shared. Naturally, as the data available to us represents but a partial fraction of the real number of species currently estimated as known to us, the pieces in this series show animated specimens that bear some, little, or even no resemblance to the species they are meant to depict.
This underlines the difficulties we face in shifting also our digital spaces towards more balanced representation, but it should be grounds for agency too: as we can all create and contribute both physically and digitally and as such can actively work to form new feedback loops that can help bring the critically endangered species into our daily lives in order to get to find ways to care for them?
This project was released by Fellowship in collaboration with Nguyen Wahed Gallery and ARTXCODE. 
Exhibition details: https://fellowship.xyz/exhibition/critically-extant-by-sofia-crespo

Fimbristylis Hirsutifolia

Orchidaceae are an ever-evolving, mutating, and generative family of flowering plants. Meditating upon this evolution we explore the neural expressions of orchid essence, entangling with their cross-pollination of features, details and adaptions: a bustling, rich torrent of diversity and exuberance.

Music by @beatsbyholly

special thanks to Alan Ixba

A evolução das orquídeas

Foundation

A homage to the work of Anna Atkins (1799-1871) without which we might not have learned new ways of seeing and been far poorer for it.

cryptic_markings_1799

SuperRare

[[through the veil of the generative, an exploration of the depths of the sea]]

Year: 2021

[[aquatic_observations_9823]]

Hic et Nunc

Time after vessels #89

Time after vessels by Sofia Crespo

Rarible

Destuntzia rubra

Critically Extant is a project that explores just how little we know about the natural world by testing the limits of the data openly available to us in our digital lives. To achieve this, AI algorithms were trained on millions of open source images of nature and some ten thousand species. The resulting models were then used to generate visual representations of species that are critically endangered, yet have little or no online presence specially on social media The goal of this was to not only trace the edges of our knowledge, but to also explore how we can create feedback loops in the digital that can be positive for the natural world.

sofiacrespo

sofiacrespo

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