ANDY GOLDSWORTHY

Goldsworthy creates ephemeral sculptures using materials he finds outdoors — leaves, stones, twigs, wood, soil, snow, and ice transform into aesthetic forms. Many of his creations are dismantled by the elements; dispersed by the wind or disassembled by rising tides.

Goldsworthy documents his temporary creations with photographs. He states, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive….Process and decay are implicit.”

See Goldsworthy’s wikipedia entry.

The film Rivers and Tides documents Goldsworthy’s approach to creating natural sculptures.

Andy Goldsworthy

KARL SIMS

Karl Sims creates digital simulations inspired by evolution.

Galapagos, 1997
"Twelve computers simulate the growth and behaviors of a population of abstract animated forms and display them on twelve screens arranged in an arc. The viewers participate in this exhibit by selecting which organisms they find most aesthetically interesting and standing on step sensors in front of those displays. The selected organisms survive, mate, mutate and reproduce. Those not selected are removed, and their computers are inhabited by new offspring from the survivors. The offspring are copies and combinations of their parents, but their genes are altered by random mutations. Sometimes a mutation is favorable, the new organism is more interesting than its ancestors, and is then selected by the viewers. As this evolutionary cycle of reproduction and selection continues, more and more interesting organisms can emerge."1

Genetic Images, 1993
Abstract 3D images evolve based on genetic algorithms and audience choice.

Evolved Virtual Creatures, 1994
Virtual creatures perform tasks that test their abilities — one test, for example, measures creatures' swimming skills. If the creatures perform well, they pass their genes on to the next generation. Over several generations, virtual reproduction and mutation create creatures with skills adapted to the task at hand.

1 Karl Sims, Galapagos.

FESTO

Festo creates robots inspired by sea creatures, land animals, and flying insects. Some of their inventions are BionicKangaroo, BionicOpter, AquaJelly, SmartBird, AquaPenguin, and Aqua_Ray.

See the full range of Festo's bionic robots.

CATHERINE CHALMERS

“Insects are a window into the unimaginable. Their biology and behaviors are routinely bizarre and enigmatic to us – they are refreshingly outside the human perspective.”
Catherine Chalmers, interview excerpt.

Safari, 2007
Chalmers tracks the adventures of a cockroach who wanders through a colorful and dangerous terrarium. Chalmers’ camerawork provides an up-close, intimate view of the insect and amphibian world.

Food Chain
Chalmers documents animals eating other animals. In one series called Pinkies, a litter of newly born mice are devoured by a snake, a frog, and even another mouse. Chalmers provides an unflinching view of the survival instinct.

Catherine Chalmers' Pinkies

See Chalmers' website.

ANN HAMILTON

The common SENSE, 2014
Hamilton scans a selection of animal specimens from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture to create a memento-mori bestiary. The scans are cropped and printed on newsprint pads that let visitors tear off a favorite print and take it with them. Hamilton describes the work as “an address to the finitude and threatened extinctions we share across species—a lacrimosa, an elegy, for a future being lost.”

Read more about the exhibit here.

See Hamilton’s website.