Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg: If Design exists to offer solutions, can it perhaps save the world?
DS.WRITER:
Sophia Throuvala
Central Image Source: daisyginsberg.com
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is a unique case of a visual designer who strives to show through her academic research that design can form a better, even if still ominous, future. Ginsberg caught our attention mostly because she finds unique ways of narrating and processing reality, mainly with the help of technology and biomedicine in art and design. Most of her works incorporate a utopian or dystopian vocabulary, raising concerns and offering possible solutions to contemporary or future issues regarding life on Earth (plant, animal and human life) but also on other planets, presenting more ecological versions of existence for discussion. The main focus of her work is experimentation and research on the issues of a new type of nature that exists on the boundaries between science and science fiction. These boundaries act as an allusion and scathing comment on the concept of survival, perpetuation and our sustainable behaviour towards the environment - whatever that may be.
One of her first laboratory-related projects was E. chromi, a precursor to what followed. The collaboration between the artist/designer and scientific team from the field of synthetic biology yielded a completely new variety of coloured pigments, visible to the naked eye, through genetically engineered bacteria.
Image Source: daisyginsberg.com
In the project The Synthetic Kingdom: A Natural History of the Synthetic Future, Ginsberg respectively examines the experimentation on nature through synthetic biology and the goal of the latter to hold complete control over the former. While talking about the value of "synthetic infection", a low probability error/leakage from laboratories that study and develop "predatory bacteria" to eliminate diseases, she mentions a scenario of surrendering the human body to science or, in this case, art. According to the "rules" of synthetic biology, we can potentially choose a trait from an existing organism by appropriating its DNA to create artificial life forms that we can sustain and control. The key question posed by Ginsberg in these projects is whether we would thereby degrade our sense of self since our lives could be simplified to molecular interactions -and whether this compromise is worth it.
Image Source: tentacular.es
In her succeeding projects, Ginsberg deals with the exploration of space and how design is one of the creative industries that is called upon to find solutions. Using the diet of astronauts and the preservation of edibles inside the aircraft as an example, she proposes replacing photosynthesis with electrosynthesis. The goal is to replace typical agriculture and its terrestrial needs with scientific fields that no longer depend on the behaviour of one or more planets, their seasonal conditions and their relation to the Sun. Thus, the artist in Seasons of the Void simultaneously proposes the production of fruit in space a) for the astronauts and b) for their "exportation" and sale on Earth, raising the question of whether the Genetically Modified products - made of redesigned yeast and electricity - coming from space should be treated differently from those on earth.
Image Source: designcurial.com
In the 2019 video installation The Wilding of Mars, Ginsberg deals with the colonisation of Mars. The truly pioneering theme of the work develops the relationship between man and nature in the context of survival and migration. Could we colonise another planet, in this case, Mars, with herbs and plants but not humans? Could we use the pristine conditions of a planet and the space it offers by developing life forms that are interconnected with our own life and survival but are not us? As Ginsberg herself muses: Might leaving the planet to other life forms be the ultimate unnatural act for humans? Can we imagine Mars except as a place for ourselves?
Ginsberg's relationship with plants, animals and the concept of survival, as well as the modern "archaeology" of recently lost species, is also present in her latest projects. The Substitute is a cry for the paradoxical concern we show in constructing new life forms while neglecting existing ones. The work was created on the occasion of the recent extinction of the last northern white rhinoceros, which Ginsberg brings “back to life” using AI as an ironic comment on museum displays as a solution to extinction.
Image source: pollinator pathmaker - Sophia Throuvala, | pollinator.art
Her latest project, pollinator.art, is an algorithmic garden. In particular, it is an absolutely free and accessible design tool website in which one can design small or large gardens so that they become hosts for insect pollinators - such as bees, butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, etc. - which are necessary for the reproduction of many plant species and the flourishing of ecosystems to a superlative degree. The anthropogenic presence, pesticides, invasive tools and climate change are causing alarming declines in pollinator populations around the world. Pollinator Pathmaker Edition as a free AI mockup can suggest the ideal planting based on soil and atmosphere conditions, changes in climate and general "agricultural" needs and can be applied to any garden. The website informs you about the scientific names of the plants and the insects that each one of them hosts, aiming to raise awareness in a larger part of the population and to help implement such gardens using the digital garden as a map. The first Pollinator Pathmaker Edition gardens - a 55m permanent installation at Eden Project, in Cornwall, and eleven winding flowerbeds in London's Kensington Gardens, commissioned by Serpentine - are now open to the public, and more large-scale gardens are on the way.
