LIGHT, TOUCH, ROOT (HYBRID)
2024 — ongoing, Mixed Media Installation
The work was created during a residency organized by Künstlerische Tatsachen, as a guest researcher at the University of Ulm in the special research area CataLight, which involves three German universities and one Austrian university working on replicating photosynthesis to produce sugar instead of hydrogen as an energy carrier.
Text: Vanessa Amoah Opoku & Marie Niederleithinger
Exhibition views: FangSheng Chou
Using near-infrared LiDAR scanning, the artist captures so-called invasive plant species and transforms them into point clouds in a completely new space. The low-frequency 800 nm-light of the 3D scanner not only interacts with the position of the plants in space and their surface structure. The plants may also sense the infrared light and it might stimulate their growth.
Vanessa Amoah Opoku, uses these plants, often labeled as »invasive« or »pest-like« as an opportunity to reflect on the seemingly unchangeable notions of home, (national) borders, and the resilience of nature. She focuses on their remarkable adaptability to human-made environments.
In a virtual, science fiction-inspired space with two suns, she transforms the plants into new species. In this new environment, they embody an evolution based on resilience. Their forms, colors, and characteristics are preserved, but reinterpreted.
Different parts of the point cloud scans reflect or absorb simulated infrared light. In this process, the water stored in the leaves becomes visible through brightly illuminated reflections. 3D-printed reliefs emerge from the image into physical space. Visitors are invited to touch them and experience the virtual space in a tactile way. Ghostly representations of the original plants hover above the image.
Vanessa Amoah Opoku created these photograms using light-sensitive photoemulsion and exposure to UV light. The seasonal light spectrum and constitution of the plants shape the image.
Worlds with two suns, like those that exist outside our solar system, have different physical conditions. If the plants there too were to feed on a kind of photosynthesis, what kind of energy conversion and artificial photosynthesis would it be?
The artist practices an interaction with nature based on different types of light that goes beyond the distorted practice of »mere representation«. The exposure of plants to infrared light during the digitization process, as well as to UV light during the exposure of the photograms, leaves traces in virtual and physical space. These traces dissolve the boundaries between the artificial and the living, showing the human relationship to nature in a hybrid light.
The plant species were collected at the Botanical Garden of Ulm University.
Five main research questions:
- How does infrared light interact with plant biology during scanning, and what potential effects does this have on plant growth and behavior?
- How does reframing our view of these plants challenge the traditional divide between "native" and "foreign" species, and what does this reveal about our concepts of national borders and identity?
- How do different light types (IR, UV) create unique ways of documenting and interacting with nature, and what does this tell us about the relationship between artificial and living systems?
- How does blurring the line between "artificial" and "living" mirror the constructed nature of our categories like "native" and "invasive"?
- How do tactile interactions with 3D-printed reliefs connect our virtual and physical experiences of nature, and what does this mean for our relationship with digital natural forms?