Saturday 2 March 2019

tulpenmanie

Recognising a clear line of succession from the first socio-economic bubble—the Tulip fever (previously) whose speculative collapse had never been experienced before (though have little financial impact on the Dutch Republic) straight through to the disruptive power of crypto-currency, Berlin-based artist Anna Ridler is using artificial intelligence to mine for impossible flowers. Naming her installation “Mosaic Virus” after the vector that produces the unpredictable but highly-sought after variety in the monocots, Ridler employs a generative adversarial network as an algorithm to weed out undesirable mutations and select for valued traits—a contemplation on nature and market tendencies coloured by human impulse and aesthetic.