Is the term"artificial life an oxymoron?Natalie Jeremijenko an artist trained in science and engineering,creates works that force us to examine the problematic consequence of digital and other techologies,such as cloning,rabotics and software .
A-trees,for example,allows as to witness the growth of a simulated tree on a computer deskptop,as if it were an actual plant in soil.The tree is programmed to change gradually algorithm.The tree's growth rate isn't determinedsolely by Jeremijenko's programming,however,every upward spurt reflects the actual level of carbon dioxide in the air in the micro-environment surrounding the computer,measured by a real-time carbon dioxide metre.More than mere renditions of a living tree,Jeremijenko's A-tree serve as aestheticized monitors of actual air quality and ,by extension,global warming.They call into question the fate of real trees in a world whose environment is increasingly impacted on by humans,as if to suggest that one day the only trees left will be digital ones.The work's title alludes to artificial life,commomly known as "a-life".if A-trees grow and die in response to their environment,are they in fact alive?Jeremijenko cleverly bridges the real and the virtual,both as a technical feat and as a conceptual gesture,encouraging us to question our understandging of life and how we might work not only to recreate it digitally,but also to preserve it.
Jeremijenko's Stump(1999)involes what the artist descrease as a"printer queue virus"that calculates how many pieces of paper a printer has consumed.when the printer uses the rough equivalent of one medium-sized tree's worth og paper,it automatically spits out a printed image of a ringed cross-section of a tree trunk.Eventually,a tree-or at least a tree stumo-could be reconstructed by stacking these paper rings.Like A-trees,Stump encourages us to develop a personal relationship tp environmental destruction.In 2000,"Mute".a London New Media art magazine,piblished both Stump and a version of A-trees on a CD-ROM and linked the two to a public art project.One Tree,which involved the planting of 1,000 clones of a single tree around San Francisco.
Jeremijenko's first arboreal art work was Tree Logic a public sculpture at MASS MoCA in which six live trees are permanently suspended upside down,inverting their natural orientation and challenging our notions of what is natural,Jeremijenko's tree project bring to mind works by Robert Smithson,who often used trees as elements of art works that re-examined the natural landscape.Smithson's 1972 declaration,"i aim for art that
takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation",could easily be applied to Jeremijenko's work which investigates the relationship between technology and the natural world.
谢谢拉~~~~~~~