AI in the Sky, Laura Cinti. Photo: C-LAB.
9’ 29’’
The Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii) is a rare cycad, classified as ‘extinct in the wild,’ and known only from a single male specimen discovered in oNgoye Forest, South Africa. Removed from its natural habitat, it survives today through cloned fragments of the original plant. As a dioecious species, it requires a female counterpart for sexual reproduction - without which no seeds can be produced.
oNgoye Forest has not been fully surveyed, leaving open the possibility of undiscovered specimens. Until now, expeditions have relied on traditional field-based searches on foot. In our search, drones and multispectral imaging are used and combined with AI-assisted species detection to search for the E. woodii over the forest. In AI in the Sky, the materials from the drone flights, the mosaic maps, the AI outputs, and the synthetic imagery are woven together into a visual narrative where the forest dissolves into data that is processed, segmented, reassembled and analysed by algorithms. The search is ongoing.
Link to the artwork website: https://www.c-lab.co.uk/projects/AIintheSky
Laura Cinti is a research-based artist whose practice intersects science, technology and visual storytelling through experimentation and field research. More recently, her focus has shifted to biodiversity loss, using creative and technological approaches to rethink our relationship with endangered species. Her works have been exhibited and presented internationally.
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