‘Once Upon A Garden’ is a digitally composited garden presenting a dystopian projection of a likely outcome of global warming. It depicts a world where humans now have to live with simulated images of plants and flowers because they have all disappeared from earth. It asks whether the preservation of nature is compatible with the goals of industrialised and industrialising societies, and in general is a reflection on what gets left behind in our pursuit of progress.
‘Once Upon a Garden’ is ultimately a GAN (generative adversarial network) trained on thousands of images of extinct and endangered flora from the Sahel region, where I was born and live. It was created with the intent to be an installation that mimics walking through an artificial garden, and all the sorrow and beauty that this implies.
The extended gardens build on previous gardens in this body of work, and add more species under new light conditions. They are longer, more immersive garden experiences that invite deeper meditation on flora we lost.
