Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg: How tech can resurrect the smell of extinct flowers

What were the origins of 'Resurrecting the Sublime'?

"The project is a collaboration between myself, the smell researcher and artist Sissel Tolaas and her lab which is supported by IFF and the biotechnology company Gingko Bioworks.

A team of synthetic biologists led by Christina Agapakis work together to resurrect the smell of extinct flowers. the project started when Christina and her team decided that they wanted to see if it was possible to bring back the smell of extinct flowers and Christina went to the Harvard University herbarium to sample, to search out any extinct specimens in the archives."

"From this work in the lab, smell researcher Sissal Tolaas was given a list of the smell molecules the flowers may have produced. With the reconstructed smell, I designed and built an installation where a visitor can experience the smell of a lost flower in an abstracted version of its landscape."

Home of the hibiscus

"The Hibiscadelphus wilderianus grew on the slopes of Mount Haleakalā on the island of Maui, Hawaii. It was last seen in 1912 and the flower itself went extinct due to colonial cattle ranching. The indigenous flora and fauna was decimated. Where there was once a forest on these dry lava slopes, today there is just grassland and cows roaming.

With each of these flowers, we are focusing on flowers that were lost to colonial input and activities. The hibiscus itself was a beautiful green flower with a red central part. This flower grew on a tree as part of the forest on that slope and the last one was found in a dying state in 1912. The effort to try and bring back the smell is both trying to get a glimpse of that lost plant itself and also bring back the landscape that it was once part of."

What interests you in artificial life?

"For the last ten years or more, I've been exploring synthetic biology which is a kind of genetic engineering which employs engineering principles onto the design of living matter. I became really intrigued by this field of science and engineering because the engineers involved were effectively designing living matter and I wanted to know what would they design? What would good design be? And ultimately, who would get to decide?

Scientists and engineers are using tools of machine learning and AI in the laboratory and in doing so, we start to see convergence of technologies where, as humans who are part of the natural world, there are immense questions we need to be asking urgently about who gets to use these technologies - and what they are used for."

What do you think the artist of the future looks like?

"The artist of the future maybe looks like me, maybe looks like a scientist, a smell researcher - maybe none of the above. I hope that whichever technologies we're using, whether that's paint or advanced biotechnology that the artist remains an important role to help us reflect on the decisions we make as a society. And bring a critical voice into technology, that's something I really enjoy in my practice. The different ways we've used technology in this project, from simulations of the lost landscapes to smell reconstruction are just tools to get people to have an emotional response and that to me is what good art aspires to do and helps us think about our place in the world at large."