semillas la vida en cápsulas de tiempo - Clh.es

PHYTOPIAROB KESSELERThe urge to portray and understand the flowers and plants that surround us has a long and glorious history. Theyhave become powerful symbols that carry many messages, markers with which we retain contact with the naturalworld; it is hard to imagine a part of our lives that they do not touch upon. As the systematic study of plants hasevolved, so too have attitudes to picturing plants, which in their own way have propagated a complex andcolourful genus of criticism, full of contradictory opinions and attitudes that reflect divergent attitudes withinthe respective fields of art and science:In the art world illustration is a dirty word. It suggests slavish copying. It’s seen as belonging to the world of functionality.And we all know art is at its best when it transcends functionality – when in short it is useless. 13Botanical illustrations have very little to do with art, but belong rather to the realm of the sciences. Aesthetic considerationsare wholly inappropriate, and beauty is a pleasant but wholly irrelevant, side effect. 14Apart from doing a great disservice to the artists involved these two statements also seem to imply that thework only has validity within the immediate community for which it was created. In reality, the fabulous diversityof botanical art has been responsible for creating, inspiring and informing new audiences, reflecting the idealsand aspirations of the societies in which it was created. What these comments demonstrate is that every disciplinehas its taboos and agreed modes of operation beyond which consensus suggests we do not tread, even within anart world where pride is taken in subverting the rules.The languages engendered by contemporary art and nature are complex and cyclical. However, whilst it isnow recognised that our experience of nature is culturally mediated it is important not to lose sight of the objectof that mediation. Discourse on the nature of nature can be erosive, like a photocopy of a photocopy ; it candegenerate to the point where the image is there but the detail has gone. The difference between seeing whatyou eat and eating what you see is an important distinction. The human instinct to distinguish between the edibleand the poisonous, an enemy and one’s prey is an instinctive evolutionary tool essential for survival. However,the current pace of life, speed of change and diversity of the objects and images that pass before our eyes hasevolved into overwhelming visual miasma, requiring us to become adept at instantly identifying, assimilating andcataloguing them. Have we now become expert at recognition at the expense of a more perceptive understandingand appreciation that arises from a concentrated examination of any given subject? Has societyabrogated that responsibility to ‘experts’ with their rational taxonomic and genetic systems of identification andclassification?Take for example a common meadow buttercup (Ranunculus acris), easily recognisable across a field. Theexpert will tell us that the family to which it belongs (Ranunculaceae) is a primitive flowering plant not easilydefined in evolutionary terms, with over thirty different wild varieties in the United Kingdom, including notonly buttercups but also spearwort, hellebore, water-crowfoot, pasqueflower, wood anemone, columbine andtraveller’s-joy. The non-specialist in contrast, whilst its descriptive name might revive childhood memories ofholding a flower up under the chin to detect a fondness for butter, might nevertheless be hard pressed to say howmany petals it has.In the creation of this book many hours have been spent examining the complexities of very small seeds,highly magnified on a scanning electron microscope (SEM). With such a tool the diversity of form and structuralcomplexity of seeds is staggering; that such detail exists on such a minute scale is difficult to comprehend andone can only marvel at the technology that makes this possible. Returning to examine the plants and flowersfrom which the seeds had been collected necessitates a more concentrated inspection and in so doing one is madeaware of the sophistication and power of our own in-built optical technologies. The difference between lookingand seeing is thrown into sharp focus.The creation of images for this book was conceived to revive the spirit of looking. The macro photographyof the original flowers brings them into hyper realistic focus to encourage the reader to look again at the familiarflower, whether a roadside weed or florist’s bouquet. Under the SEM the technology works its magic but presentsus with a black and white image, which is subsequently coloured. This often provokes the question, “Is this thereal colour of the seed?”, to which the answer is no. And so how is the colour chosen and why?Without going too deeply into the philosophical conundrum of what is colour, it is worth rememberingthat when we look at a flower we do not see it in the same way as an insect. Flowers have evolved complexstrategies to ensure they attract the appropriate pollinators, through smell, morphological imitation, colourcoding, and patterning. Most insects have greater sensitivity to colours at the blue end of the spectrum and areable to detect ultra-violet colours, revealing patterns that direct the insect to the pollen bearing parts of the flowerlike an aircraft guided to a safe landing by runway lights at night.Working together as an artist and scientist with the same shared fascination for seeds, as for the plants fromwhich we collected them, we too employed diverse strategies to ensure that our subject attracts as many “visitors”as possible. Under normal conditions scientific research is restricted to a very focussed methodological approach,but in this case we selected our samples with the express purpose of revealing extremities of form. Since biodiversityis so vital within our ecosystems for the continued longevity of human existence we believe that it isimportant to celebrate this diversity. The selected specimens were composed and photographed to reveal theirmorphological characteristics with an intimate and awesome clarity. To these grey images colour has been added,a chromatic interference often inspired by the hues of the original flower, a subtle blending reminiscent of handtintedphotogravures, lending the images a mysterious otherworldliness that transforms a spectator from one whojust looks to one who sees and wants to know more. The colour guides the eye and moistens enquiry to stimulatewhat Mark Gisborn refers to as “imagination of resemblance” 15 through a total fusion of contemporary scientificand artistic practice. In so doing we hope to revive the importance of collaboration between artists and botanicalscientists, an importance that was succinctly highlighted by Dr. T.J.Diffey in his essay, “Natural beauty withoutmetaphysics”: 16For art to continue this traditional task of making nature aesthetically accessible to a wider public, at least three thingsare necessary: first, nature requires mediation to an audience because that audience cannot appreciate it unaided; secondly,the art which mediates nature must not be relentlessly formal and abstract in its intentions; thirdly, nature must beavailable to the artist as a subject to study.English texts 287