Strange metamorphic faces, as these nine schoolchildren transform into flowers before our very eyes. Colonized by petals inspired by the flowers made of papier-mâché, wood and other materials by Robert Brendel in Germany in the 19th century for educational purposes, these hybridized faces mutate under the action of an artificial intelligence fed by floral images. The result of research and exchanges with scientists in plant biology, the documentary film that unfolds before our eyes transforms itself to become a fable, on the edge of fairy tale and science fiction. " I'm a botanical chimera [...] a tangle of roots reaching out into outer space", we hear from the blossoming mouth of one of the mutant protagonists after the computer system modeling the plant development process 1 combined with AI has generated the improbable human-plant transformations.
Divided into three chapters, from research and encounters with plants to artificial mutation, the film is akin to an initiation tale, with a strange symbiosis between its subject matter - the fictional story of a mutation - and its protagonists, teenagers who are themselves in transition... Loving to blur boundaries (between the real and the artificial, botany and technology...), Lea Collet, who has just graduated from the Studio national arts contemporains du Fresnoy, takes us to the crossroads between artificial intelligence and the imaginary of the artificial.), Lea Collet, fresh out of the Studio national des arts contemporains du Fresnoy, takes us to the crossroads between artificial intelligence and the imaginary of the artificial, inviting us to consider AI's creative potential as a possible way forward, an open door to an unknown world capable of generating new poetry. Here associated with survival, mutation appears above all as a dream and a fantasy, that of "becoming fluid, free to move from one form to another [...] plural, ambiguous...".
1 - L-system or Lindenmayer system invented in 1968 by Hungarian biologist Aristid Lindenmayer, modeling the growth process of living beings such as plants and cells.
A garden enthusiast, Lea Collet (born in Lyon in 1989) studied at the DIU ArTeC+ (Paris) after passing through the Slade School of Fine Art and Camberwell College of Arts in London.
Installation adapted from an original creation
by Léa Collet. Production Le Fresnoy - studio national
des arts contemporains, 2023
© Léa Collet - Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains - 2023
Work visible in the exhibition
" Tomorrow is cancelled... "
Espace de la Fondation EDF
6, rue Juliette-Récamier, Paris 7e
Until September 20, 2024
