The Futuristic Flora of Emma Varley
By Brynn Gordon
Flowers, herbariums, botanical sketches, artificial intelligence: one of these terms feels out of place amongst the others, so it may be surprising to readers to know that these disparate elements combine in the works of Emma Varley.
Emma Varley, Kaleidoscopic Terrarium Series, 2023. A.I. Generated Image, Fife Contemporary.
Varley’s work is characterized by contention of the organic and the inorganic, giving viewers the impression of looking at a cross-section of a seed pod and a work of monumental architecture all at once. This disconnect is fostered by Varley’s unconventional and cutting-edge choice of medium - images generated by artificial intelligence.
I was fortunate enough to speak to Varley, the current artist in residence at the St Andrews Botanical Gardens, at their “Big Spring Bash” held in February. A graduate of Leeds Metropolitan University and Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art, Varley worked primarily as a printmaker and Art Educator for most of her career. However, when the pandemic stopped her from accessing her studio, Varley began to explore alternative ways to continue her art practice, through which she discovered AI.
By constructing meticulously detailed text prompts to feed into engines such as Dall.E or Midjourney, Varley can generate images based on precise specifications. The texture of the objects can be specified as “porcelain” or the atmosphere can be changed by specifying that the scene takes place in “summer”. Currently, Varley’s prompts draw inspiration from the Botanical Garden’s herbarium and greenhouses which turn into her natural, alien forms. From there, each image is further refined through fine-tuning of the prompts, selecting the best generated images, and then editing and combining them to Varley’s liking.
Emma Varley, Cross Section Plant Cities (Spring Equinox), 2023. A.I. Generated Image.
Varley’s involvement comes at the start and end of the creation of a final image, generating the text prompt and selecting the final image. She embraces the element of chance AI images bring, resulting in a creative process that is unexpected and democratic, comparable to the ready-mades of the 20th century Dada artists. Like Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1951), where the chance encounters of found objects facilitated by the artist created the final work of art, Varley too is intrigued by the idea of relinquishing a degree of creation: supervising the creation of the work without dictating it.
Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle 1951, Found Objects, MoMA.
Emma Varley, Sculptural Biodiversities, 2022. A.I Generated Image.
This desire for detachment, and to let the “natural” process of image generation take place, reveals Varey’s thematic concern with the intersection of nature and technology. Taking a walk by the sand dunes along West Sands one day, Varley was moved by the “unseen world” of the plant life within those dunes and how such small life-forms could have adapted to survival next to the vast North Sea. In this way, the A.I. medium takes on a symbolic meaning, acting almost as an artificial mode for evolution in nature: no matter how detailed the original prompt is, the systems within the AI engines always produce a different and totally unique image, much like the random adaptations that allow plants to exist in new areas.
Emma Varley, Perceptive Plants, 2023. AI Generated Image, Fife Contemporary.
The organic qualities of Varley’s inspiration are paralleled in the process of image generation, the engine itself being a sort of ecosystem that humans can affect as much as evolution. The digital element of her work also serves a more pressing purpose - in the face of climate change, this natural process may be lost entirely. saved only in digital work like hers. This desire to make people really consider what the natural world is made of also ties into the St Andrews’ Botanical Garden’s mission to preserve the town’s biodiversity. The very dunes that inspired Varley, and that are at risk due to everything from littering to coastal erosion, have been recreated in the garden to allow visitors to see the hidden worlds we often overlook up-close.
Varley’s work is some of the first A.I. art I have seen that has effectively harnessed an emerging field. Controversial for intellectual property infractions, deep fake technology, and the spate of low-quality A.I. meme fodder, A.I. is a young medium often cast in a very poor light. Steps taken by engines to protect intellectual property and Varley’s deliberate and methodological properties show the potential for original, creative work to come out of A.I. when harnessed deliberately. Regardless of how we individually feel, A.I is going to do for contemporary art what the invention photography did in the 19th century, bringing with it new sets of challenges, controversies, and potential. If Emma Varley’s work is anything to go by, it certainly does not represent the so called “death” of art.
Emma Varley’s website and Instagram page can be found below:
Website: https://elvarley.wordpress.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elvarley311/
“When we invented the typewriter we didn’t stop writing. When we created the keyboard, again we didn’t stop writing… but we are still thinking, writing, doing the same things, despite advances of technology. ”
Bibliography
Alexander, Michael. “St Andrews Botanic Garden artist fears that one day some plants might only exist in virtual reality”. Feburary 25th 2023. https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/fife/4142605/st-andrews-botanic-garden-artist-fears-that-one-day-some-plants-might-only-exist-in-virtual-reality/
“Bicycle Wheel”, MOMA Learning, 2023. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/marcel-duchamp-bicycle-wheel-new-york-1951-third-version-after-lost-original-of-1913/
Brand, Aron. “Is A.I. the Death of Art? Or the Future of Creativity?”. September 3rd 2022. Medium. https://medium.com/mlearning-ai/is-a-i-the-death-of-art-or-the-future-of-creativity-78ed410673d3
Varley, Emma. “About” Emma Varley. April 2023. https://elvarley.wordpress.com/about/