How do we engage with the rich diversity of the natural world in virtual, digital space? “Artifical Remnants” is part of an ongoing exploration of artificial life using AI to generate insects as well as their names and anatomical descriptions. The intention is to celebrate the natural diversity of insectile life, not through the precise, sterile digital reproduction of it, but in the form of new specimens that are digital natives. These do not attempt to impersonate existing insects, but rather embody an insectile “essence” born from the training of AI algorithms upon datasets of existing insects leading to novel, non-human understandings of the natural. Their diversity and decidely digital qualities are in complementary contrast to the unsurpasable creaitvity of natural selection, but can act as a prism with which approach new perspectives and appreciation of the vulnerable, non-human world we often take for granted.
Sofia Crespo is an artist working in biology-inspired technologies. One of her main focuses is the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, this implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic life that created them and not a completely separated object. On the side, she is also hugely concerned with the dynamic change in the role of the artists working with machine learning techniques.