Nature and Art have always been seen as functions which are inextricably bound up with each other. With its mysterious, nutritive, and vital force, nature has traditionally been the ultimate inspiration for the artist who, depending on his or her orientation, has sought to imitate it, improve it, or interpret it. However, representing nature today is not easy for the artist who sees it being recreated everyday by the likes of geneticists, computer programmers, and real estate developers.
In creating a vision of nature, today’s artists, unlike their predecessors, are confronting an environment that may no longer be possible to describe as natural. It has become so artificial that the traditional aspiration of the artist to “reveal the truth” in what he or she sees may have become impossible. Now, with the direction of science toward the creation of artificial life forms and a computerized virtual reality, and with the emphasis on image rather than substance in communications and in marketing of everything from automobiles to politicians, there is no longer one absolute reality. There is only the possibility of multiple realities, each one as “real” or as artificial as the others.
The Post-Modern artist now confronts a Post-Natural nature. The changes in our perception of reality resulting from these new technologies of synthesis and simulation are likely to lead to profound changes in the way artists and everyone else begin to interpret and understand the world. As in the past, it will probably be the artists who are best able to sense and visualize the resulting changes in consciousness and create a new vision that will begin to redefine the way we perceive.
Artificial Nature aims to demonstrate the problems caused by changes in the relationship between man and nature, which lead to his isolation. It examines the changes brought upon our conscience by the conversion of the natural environment into the artificial and the changes that derive from developments in science and computers, all while a consumerist culture is developing.
