“[...] glass eyes and empty lungs”

Ignorance is bliss for life in the hybridized garden. I haven’t told the plants who they share their space with, and it wouldn’t make a difference if I did. Cycles of growth and decay poke, prod, and puppeteer the newcomers such that all are animate. All work together regardless of organic or synthetic composition. “[...] glass eyes and empty lungs” is my fascination with machine and automation technologies’ capacity to imitate life with disconcerting precision; charming chatbots satisfy consumers, synthesized Drake vocals top charts, and AI-generated photography manipulates social discourse. Where modern machines enable “close enough” reproductions, the love and labour of plant care can be substituted with occasional dusting. This sentiment spawns from sociologist Dann Downes’s theory of Interactive Realism where psychological and social change are examined not as the consequence of technology, but as the result of interactions between people and their environments -- digital, mechanical, (botanical,) or otherwise. Pictured: Hybridized Garden of Real (iPhone, Aruba) and Fake (GenAI, Adobe)