Ben Moren

Aspen trees grow in clonal colonies, large concentrations of genetically identical organisms which have all grown from a single ancestor. Clonal Colony utilizes StyleGAN2 trained on a large data set of aspen tree images taken by the artist in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado. Through the training, and subsequent traversal of the model's latent space, the naturally occurring clonal colony phenomenon is, in a sense, replicated in digital space using machine learning. This provides the possibility for infinite new clone images to be generated from the source data set. In Clonal Colony, the viewer is presented with a larger than life projection of an animated latent space traversal. This reveals changing seasons in the background as evolving textures, scarring, and 'Aspen Eyes' emerge, move, and disappear within the tree's bark, replicating a similar self-pruning process which occurs to the trees in nature.

Installation Photo Credit: Rik Sferra

Clonal Colony
2020
GAN generated video
15:00 (duration variable, including generative / infinite duration)