Pollinator
2000
laser cut recycled polypropylene
340 x 780 670 cms
Exhibitions
- Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award Exhibition, Werribee Park, Australia, 2001
Pollinator is a mathematically generated object that uses the geometry and growth patterns of plants to create an 'artificial organism' growing out of the landscape. Around its base small seeds or shoots are beginning to grow, threatening to engulf its environs. In the light of the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, and the genetic contamination of non-GM species by GM crops, I see Pollinator as occupying the shifting boundary between the artificial and the organic.
Pollinator plays on the idea of 'genetic determinism', as a paradigm of contemporary thinking about nature and humanities place within it. Genetic determinism is the notion that every organism (phenotype) on the planet is merely a vehicle for the replication of genes (genotype). This notion is then expanded to socio-economic theory.
The genotype of Pollinator could be seen as the geometric rule-system on which it is based. Pollinator uses a rule based on one type of bifurcation (the way many plants organise their structure). Pollinator is self generative, I provide the rule-set and the structure 'self pollinates' or 'unpacks' itself according to it. All the components are aligned to a 3 dimensional grid. Like a coral building its own calcium carbonate skeleton as it grows over the seabed, Pollinator grows from its own nodal geometry as it spreads over the lawn.