Prompting. Flora. Archives.

Focusing specifically on World Flora Online and Global Genome Diversity Network, the project investigates the potential of these datasets to transcend categorical boundaries and conventional visual forms. In doing so, it generates new spatial constellations for collections that echo the historical logic of cabinets of curiosities. These so-called wonder-rooms were encyclopedic collections that aimed to present the universal connection of all things—fusing history, art, nature, and science into a unified worldview. Building on this tradition, “Prompting. Flora. Archives.” designs affectively charged visualizations, spaces, and objects—both digital and physical—that evoke curiosity, amazement and admiration. It opens a heterotopia of discovery, exploration, and storytelling, grounded in plant taxonomies and biodiversity repositories worldwide. Bringing together leading figures from the arts and sciences, the project examines botanical data through the lens of algorithmic ecologies and critical AI design.

Motto

„Wunderbar erscheint das Neue dem, dessen ganzes Denken hierdurch erschüttert wird und in gefährliches Schwanken gerät. Allein das Wunder liegt niemals in der Tatsache, sondern immer nur im Beobachter.“ Ernst Mach, Physiker & Philosoph, 1838-1916
“The new appears miraculous to those whose entire thinking is shaken by it and becomes dangerously unsteady. But the miracle never lies in the fact, but always only in the observer.”

Research Focus

• Morphogenic Mappings: Transgeographic extractions and techno imagination. Decoding curious contrivances and navigating genetic algorithms (“Terra Incognita”).
• Speculative Configurations: AI, photography and datasets. Contingent dynamics of algorithmic taxonomies, taxonomic boundary paradoxy.
• Counterfactual Entanglements: Chromatic visions, performative encounters and more than human experimentation.
• Eclectic Techno-Ecologies: Flora frictions, data poetics and mutations as hyperreal fluidity (“Flora Incognitum”).

Key Questions

• How can multiple iterations through digital deviation in dialogue with artificial intelligence expose curious contrives? This in order to generate parallel unfolding open-ended taxonomies where the boundaries are blurred between classifications, references and histories.
• How can by re/situating the parameters of massive digital mappings shed light on predefined information hierarchies and question the static logics within collections? This with the intention of raising, through simulations within simulations, speculative futures where companionship within ecosystems can be renegotiated in light of planetary urgencies.
• In which way can algorithmic assemblages be generated to express a parallel multiplicity within the archiving of plant life in order to re-enchant narratives?

Exhibitions and Outreach

Fluid Scale of Ongoing Venues, Growing Publication, Hybrid Presentations and Exhibitions, Subversive Displays and Objects, Multiples and Mock-Merchandising.

Involved Institutions

Berlin Open LAB, UdK Berlin; Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF); TU München; University of Groningen.