Melanie Jackson /// The Urpflanze (Part 1)
Melanie Jackson has been investigating links between industry, aesthetics and plant forms, taking a lead from Goethe’s notion of the Urpflanze. The Urpflanze - or primal plant - is Goethe’s imaginary plant that contains coiled up within it, the potential to generate all possible future plants. Contemporary plant science similarly assumes the ability to create as yet undreamt of botanical objects, using an array of tools and techniques, such as nanoscience, transgenics and biomimicry. Paradoxically science also looks to primordial plant matter for clues on how to proceed. Plant science becomes an art of morphology and mutation, re-presentation and transformation, characteristics it shares with the medium of drawing.
