Potential Hemp

June 2022

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Between these four hempcrete walls, aurèce vettier studies plant forms. At the outset, a meticulous research and collection of historical herbariums, some dating from the 16th century, where thousands of dried hemp plants, cannabis sativa L. are archived, as well as a selection of plants from the hemp fields of the Marais. This is the raw material for an exploration of the generative potential of GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), a machine learning algorithm, fed by this corpus of plants—collected, selected and classified by the artist. 

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A GAN is composed of two "adversarial" neural networks. The first, the "generator" creates images with which it tries to deceive the other. Finally these images are passed to a second network which has the role of evaluating their authenticity.

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The potential plant variations, resulting from these back and forth learning exchanges, are thus considered as plausible according to the network-judge paradigm. Our human eye also receives these plant proposals with benevolence: what we contemplate in this Hemp House are, without hesitation, forms derived from hemp. Learning from this raw plant material, the algorithm is

trained to recognise, by the accumulation of images like a brain, until it knows how

to imitate the structures and outlines of life.

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The logic of this generative network resembles biological mimicry, an adaptive strategy used by certain species to escape a possible predator. Like an animal-machine, do plants obey this Cartesian mechanism in their drive to extension of life?

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These potential hemp plants produced by the learning artificial intelligence however seem to present unusual traits. Cut or circular stems, closed on themselves, which give birth to leaves isolated from their bases or marked by sharp hooks: details that raise doubts as to their respect of the tacit laws that govern, in the current eco-sphere, the structures of plant life. They are, in the artist's words, "anti-Darwinian" forms of a potential hemp: hypothetical alternative versions of the plant that have not yet occurred in the current organic world

because of their inherent impossibility to survive.

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In this new opus of Potential Herbariums, aurèce vettier builds a laboratory of plant

genesis, based on an extensive knowledge of algorithms and a polymathic approach to creation. The gaze of the machine is superimposed on that of the artist, and we are faced with a dense and multifaceted corpus proposing plural plant realities.

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These forms derived from hemp, oscillating between the plant and virtual worlds, demonstrate that the latter are both places of "infinite figurability" (E. Coccia). The movement of the algorithm mirrors plant metabolism, central and necessary to the perpetuation of life, in its way of making infinite and random visual propositions.

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Plant growth, whether it responds to the virtual or vegetal kingdom, is a "cosmogony in act", the "constant and repeated genesis of our cosmos in the form of a new stem or a new leaf" (E. Coccia, La vie des plantes). An uninterrupted dialogue of back and forth between these two worlds takes place. 

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The result is also a series of bronze sculptures, tall stalk-like hemp plants, with leaves like precious chimeras. Summoning a group of artisans, aurèce vettier

assembles around him numerous exceptional crafts.

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Exhibited in the HEMP CUBE, a new space in 91530 Le Marais, the potential hemp plants enter into ambivalent coexistence with the real hemp plants, cultivated in the fields of Le Marais’ farm, the raw material of this exploration of evolution, hybridization and survival in the world of the living.

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About

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aurèce vettier is a French artistic studio founded by Paul Mouginot in 2019. It aims at understanding how relevant and meaningful interactions with machines and algorithms can be achieved, in order to push the boundaries of creative processes.

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