'Bloom' by Jon McCormack
May to August 2006
Created using advanced software to combine elements of plant species native to the Kelvin Grove area, including Melaleuca and Banksia, Bloom reflects Dr. McCormack's 15-year investigation into computer synthesised natural spaces.
Five unique hybrid blooms are presented in formalist isolation, starkly displayed on a dark background. The original image was enlarged 3000 per cent to fit the 45 x 9 m canvas.
Elements of the natural, such as the iconic Bunya Pine or native Banksia, are juxtaposed with artificially generated images, resulting in a dichotomy between the familiar and exotic.
Bloom was selected for its inherent softness and synthetic beauty drawing on the dualist nature of synthetic biology's promise of immense new possibilities and its ability to visually arrest the viewer with the suggestion of these ambiguities.
Jon's specially-designed computer software simulates the growth processes of natural organisms in a way that parallels nature with digital 'genes' encoding the process of construction and development of an organism.
The genes themselves can be subject to evolutionary processes of mutation and crossover based on the aesthetic preference of the artist. This represents a fundamental shift in traditional concepts of artistic practice since the artist does not explicitly design or create the images, rather, they are evolved. The artistic process becomes one of 'meta creation' where creative ideas are expressed in software that produces the final artwork.
