Garden of Elowan is home to a collection of speculative plant species in the form of an immersive AR greenhouse. The virtual installation imagines a not-so-distant future in which the natural world has fused with digital technology, inspired by real life stories of cyborg botany and digital sentience. It’s a space for visitors to explore the fantastical realm between physical and digital existence and ponder what life beyond Earth may one day look like.
Inside the greenhouse grows a family of newly evolved plants, upgraded and adapted to exist in an online world. Though living in the non-physical realm, the plants’ leaves are made with microscopic cell photos and digitally captured textures of wildflowers; by bringing in these otherwise invisible layers of reality to the garden, the question of what we experience as ‘real’ and ‘natural’ in an increasingly digitised world arises, as virtual and physical nature collide.
Will technology alter the evolution of plant life? Where is the line between virtual and physical space? And what might the world look like when nature and tech become one?
Garden of Elowan was created with the help of microscopy artist Mellissa Fisher and in collaboration with 3D animators, Boxcat Studio.
To experience it, you'll need to download Adobe Aero on a phone or iPad and follow this link.
Georgia Janes is a Kent-based visual artist driven by the ever-expanding limits of digital technologies. Janes’ practice embodies an experimental approach favouring speculative thinking and playful use of mixed media to question the merging boundaries between physical and digital space. Inspired by sci-fi tales and visions of the future, Janes’ work contemplates the shifting landscape between technology, nature and art.
Recent exhibitions include “Tread Lightly on the Earth” at Beach Creative and “Between Sea and Sky” at The Margate School, where she completed a photography residency in 2021. Janes is also part of arts collective Photo Mooch celebrating the link between creativity and wellbeing, founded during Redeye’s Lightbox Online programme.
