‘Khthon’

Installation: Digital prints, Lightboxes, fish tanks, silicon insect genitalia, earth, driftwood

2020

The Greek word khthon is one of several for “earth”; it typically refers to that which is under the earth, rather than the living surface of the land.

Reproductive forces are present throughout the work. The imagery in both the prints and lightboxes are created using ‘Artbreeder’ an online AI which mashes together photographs by multiple users to produce endless variations through infinite combinations.

Creating hybrid visions of chimeras, phantasms and abstractions, the Artbreeder AI uses a biological labelling system for it’s creative process – you can ‘edit genes’ and crossbreed, as well as view the family tree of image histories and relationships. Computation strives for biological variety.

Contained within the tanks are silicone models based on the formations of insect genitalia. The models express the myriad of exquisite forms and mating practices found in the animal kingdom which are often invisible to the naked eye. We often imagine what life is like on other planets, other worlds, yet what is present right under our noses is stranger than we can imagine, far more ‘alien’.