Looking at just one flower, what does it need to survive and how might those needs be impacted by climate change? A flower represents, in and of itself, its surrounding climate as well as the broader climate. If today's flower shows the data of this year, what did yesterday’s flower show about yesterday’s climate? And could we use future data to envision a future flower?

Plant Futures focuses on the flower of the Circaea alpina in Finland, portraying its past forms and imagining its future forms. The past forms are already known, gathered from the botanical archives. The future forms are generated from climate data for the years 2023 - 2100, and the morphological changes are based on research into how climate impacts flowers. Thus we bring the future flower to life, as if that future climate were already our everyday life, part of the nature we move through and collect. Capturing the possible futures as flowers allows us to experience them as rooted to the ground, though in reality the future is uncertain, and there are infinitely more ways these flowers could bloom. When looking at the flowers, frozen in space and time, perhaps viewers will draw on their own memories of nature and envision how that nature may morph in the near and far futures.

Annelie Berner and Monika Seyfried developed Plant Futures in 2023 during their residency in m-cult (FI).

Annelie Berner is a data artist and researcher based in Copenhagen. In her work, she bridges science, academia and the public, creating experiences of research that range from ethics to climate science and futures. She has won multiple honours in the Core77 Design Awards and has exhibited projects at the Smithsonian Museum, World Health Organisation, Ars Electronica among others.

Monika Seyfried is an interaction designer who works across the disciplines of science, ethics and futures. In her latest work she’s been exploring how design, art and science, in particular the field of biotechnology, can create immersive spaces for the creation of new futures. Her research focuses on how living systems and the natural world can help us to establish new perspectives on the future of technology and ecosystems.

Artist: Annelie Berner
Collaborators: Monika Seyfried (research, video editing) & Variable Studio (generative plants)
Images: courtesy of the artist

Funded by the EMAP program and hosted by m-cult (FI)