Contemporary Art Exhibition "Prompted Evolution"

In the latest exhibition by Rasa Šmite and Raitis Šmits, the artists use artificial intelligence to imagine how plants might evolve under rapid climate change.

The exhibition is based on wild Andean lupines, which grow in extreme mountain conditions and are one of the relatively recent examples of rapid diversification in plant species. In collaboration with plant evolution scientist Colin Edward Hughes of the University of Zurich, the artists digitized 100 herbarium specimens and trained a generative AI model that transforms them into speculative forms. In a three-dimensional digital environment, the plants regain the bodies they once lost as herbarium specimens and become interactive virtual organisms that respond to visitors’ hand movements and environmental data - light, temperature, and humidity.