Invertebrate Interactions
2023 - NFT (NFT)
00:25 seconds
Sofia Crespo
This short looped-video NFT Invertebrate Interactions by Sofia Crespo aims to capture generated impressions of diatoms. Diatoms are the microscopic algae that inhabit a large portion of our seas, whose anatomies are characteristically enclosed in a shell of silica, their shapes formed as various symmetries. The rapid, shifting quality of Crespo’s work reflects the pace of microscopic life, which often appears sped up to our eyes. A system of neural networks was used to generate images that capture the diversity of their shapes, not through direct observation, but through the distillation of historical archives, and some of the earliest depictions of sea algae. The resulting video consists of 242 frames, which were hand printed using cyanotype techniques and then digitized. Invertebrate Interactions is part of a series of works inspired by Anna Atkins and her book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843) was the first book ever to be printed and illustrated by photography. Atkins’s 19th century cyanotypes used light exposure and a simple chemical process to create impressively detailed blueprints of botanical specimens for the first time. While women were unable to practice science for most of the nineteenth century, botany was considered a hobby, especially botanical illustration. Atkins pushed the edge by inventing a novel way of imaging algae combining the latest knowledge of photography and botanical science. Through her work, Crespo pays homage to a kindred practitioner, another woman in history who was also working with the latest in imaging technology (of her time) as Crespo does with artificial intelligence.
Since 2018, Sofia Crespo has been working on what she terms “artificial natural history”. Her subsequent artworks are grounded in the visual history and language of biology (how specimens are recorded, indexed etc), but animated by bespoke AI technologies developed by the artist and in collaboration with her collective Entangled Others. According to Crespo, her main focus is “the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, thus implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic life that created them.” The artist is interested in the ways machine learning and neural networks can de-center human subjectivity, and model non-human evolutionary processes. Her work also considers the correlations between AI image formation and the metaphorical and creative process of human cognition.
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