herbAIrium

The short video HerbAIrium (2024) is a faux documentary about creating a herbarium. How do our identities and perceptions of ourselves change when we see and hear AI-generated representations of ourselves? This AI-generated documentary of the author's art practice is narrated by an audio-visual, identical-looking digital twin. The goal was to produce realistic-looking ‘representational images,’ accurate video depictions of the 60-year-old artist in real-world settings like her art studio and local environment. However, creating images of an AI character recognisable as the author proved challenging. Most AI-generated video sequences created via text and image prompts were not recognisable as self-portraits because the character had many traits that the author did not share. Still, some were close enough to feel uncanny. An AI voice-over, trained on the artist's voice, narrates a self-reflexive account of the artist using an AI image generator to create the video and, in the process, meeting their AI "twin". The AI artist-character is trained on selfies and voice recordings. Similarly, an AI botanical style is trained on a database of scanned 35mm slides that the artist made by arranging tiny plant specimens into small compositions. The piece playfully examines normative biases and classification inherent to AI-driven image generation systems. The video interrogates the interplay between technology, identity, and biodiversity, examining processes of categorisation that reinforce or disrupt socially constructed notions of plant heritage, gender, ageing, and death.