The work Fractal Flowers, as starting point, take observation of the plant kingdom, and its transposition within a digital universe. The process of developing computer-created plant forms is directed by software conceived specifically for the artist. For the the first works in this series (Other nature, 2003-2007), Miguel Chevalier and his team have here created eighteen "virtual seeds", allowing them to grow, come to fruition, die, and be reborn – so giving birth to an infinite variety of forms. Partially following certain parameters, the growth of these digital flowers relies on the random component of the computer program. Fractal Flowers develops this characteristic: the program that invests them with life is connected to “libraries” of forms, forms that associate with each other according to chance. Here the artist’s role is no longer to create a “digital plant” and but rather to isolate, starting from an infinite repertory, the virtual plant prototypes. Aesthetically, Fractal Flowers differs from Other Natures by its conquest of the third dimension: the result are flowers caught mid-way between the organic and the mechanic-robotic, whose strange (even menacing) aspect is tempered by the interactive control exercised upon them by the spectator.

As Lev Manovich has underscored, the distinctive characteristic of the digital oeuvre is that it is based on a code, susceptible to differing interpretations according to the given program. The Fractal Flowers exhibition at Imal amply illustrates this principle of variability: the same data are used to produce animated interactive images, printed images, or even three-dimensional forms, veritable “digital sculptures” obtained by stereo-lithography.

Beyond their aesthetic and playful qualities, Fractal Flowers questions both the status of the work of art in the digital era and, on a more poetical and metaphorical plane, the stakes involved with genetic manipulation. Nothing can predict what these “fractal flowers” might produce, free as they are to infinitely cross and reproduce. “It’s not because I use a computer that I’m modern,” states Miguel Chevalier. “I’ve always preferred using the tools of today because I feel they offer such great potential in opening new, as yet unexplored, fields in the world of the visual arts.” With Fractal Flowers, he demonstrates that his artistic intent is firmly anchored in our technological age.

Pierre-Yves Desaive