Bioscope Launch & Art Screening
30 June 2023
Join us in St Andrews Botanic Garden on Friday 30th June 2023 for a special “In Conversation” event with our Artist in Residence, Emma Varley, followed by a screening of the artist’s work, Unseen Worlds – Fertile Ground in the Bioscope Pavilion.
The Bioscope is an exciting new feature at St Andrews Botanic Garden, blending nature and technology. Designed by Marcos Cruz and Brenda Parker from the Bartlett School of Architecture, the Bioscope is alive with microscopic biodiversity. It will host time-based media developed by our Artist in Residence Emma Varley, which explores our understanding of what is natural and what is synthetic through AI generated images of elaborately constructed forms of plant life.
Schedule for Friday 30th June 2023
- 5:30pm: Welcome drinks (from St Andrews Wine Company)
- 6:15pm: In Conversation – Exploring the Connections between AI, art and evolution
- 7:15 – 8pm: Drop-in Bioscope Screenings of ‘Unseen Worlds – Fertile Ground’
Unseen Worlds – Fertile Ground
Fife Contemporary’s Artist in Residence at St Andrew’s Botanic Garden Emma Varley uses AI software as a tool to facilitate a glimpse into the spaces between algorithms into the unseen worlds of The Tangled Bank, a coastal environment in the heart of the garden. This microcosm captured her imagination, a world where native plants jostle and intermingle in their communities on fertile ground. She has adopted this liminal space to develop a series of elaborately constructed forms fostering complex digital stills which evolved into a time based artwork screened in the Bioscope. Unseen Worlds offers the viewer a closer look at the evolution of the nature and technology and how interconnected we are to laws acting around us.
Artificial intelligence has opened up new avenues of creative expression, allowing artists to produce work that extends beyond the limits our imagination. In the context of the biodiverse plant kingdom AI generated images can perhaps assist in exploring the complexities of plant life and their interaction with the environment in innovative ways
