Mimicry

Mimicry is an exploration of speculative species at the intersection of plants and insects, generated through artificial intelligence to metaphorically reflect nature's adaptive strategies. Evoking evolutionary processes such as exaptation and mimicry, the project reflects on biodiversity facing ecological shifts driven by climate change and human activity, imagining species born from the hybridization of insects and plants through AI-mediated processes that simulate possible evolutionary trajectories. The project adopts a biome classification consistent with Boonman et al. (2022), organizing the Earth into seven core biomes. This typology models ecological transitions under climate change. In an RCP 8.5 scenario, continued emissions will lead to approximately 3.5°C of warming by 2080–2100, yet evolutionary forces continue generating new life forms in response to selective pressures. Inspired by horizontal gene transfer, Mimicry enables plant-insect hybrids to continuously transform. Using text-to-image models, botanical structures are created from real Plantae clades, then merged with insectoid elements through image-to-image processing of entomological illustrations. Evolution's random dynamics generate far greater variety than what survives. Countless hybridizations fail selective filters. Humanity applies its own perceptual criteria, shaped by aesthetic norms and utilitarian logic, choosing certain outcomes from nature's vast potential. From this interplay emerge hybrid forms that don't merely adapt to change but inhabit zones of transition, becoming living metaphors of multispecies hybridization. Artistic creativity emerges as a radical tool for exploring the possible, liberating imagination from inherited canons and strict utility, allowing us to fabricate monstrous forms rooted in real patterns of coexistence. In a creative process similar to artistic creation, nature devises surprising solutions to challenges posed by environmental change.