Life Support Systems - Vanda

Thinking about yesterday's post...

The Life Support Systems deals with the possibility of enabling life to continue after death in the form of information. Electronically recording all of a creature’s memories and reactions would theoretically make life extension in virtual space possible.

The installation collects data generated by the tiny shifts in electrical current produced by the metabolic processes of vanda hybrida orchids. Then, computers running artificial intelligence software reproduce these physical states, as a virtual model, which continues to generate similar signals long after the original orchids are gone. The flowers language and behaviour model is stored in a hacked Microsoft Xbox, its future container.

"Beside turning a scientific experiment into an aesthetic construct, the work tangents questions of consciousness, longevity, and new lifeforms through computing."

By Mateusz Herczka.
Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica 2005.