These AI-mediated transformations extend a practice that began with my early robotic generative artworks, where motors, sensors, machine logic, and diagrammatic systems were used to create interactive installations responsive to environmental and biological signals. In those earlier works, mechanical behavior functioned as a form of proto-intelligence—systems that sensed, reacted, and adapted in real time.

Over the past decades, I have increasingly merged machine schematics, electronic circuitry, and algorithmic diagrams with biological imagery, producing hybrid visual languages that oscillate between the engineered and the organic. These forms suggest speculative relationships between machines and living systems: sacs become organs or containers of agency, membranes imply permeability and exchange, motors echo muscular action, and vesicles operate as carriers of information and energy.

For Synthetic Evolution, I trained AI models on my hand-drawn works series, embedding constraints and rules that echo my longstanding compositional strategies.

These rules shape how forms may recombine, mutate, and propagate, allowing the AI to function less as a tool of automation and more as an evolutionary collaborator.

Because the source material is deliberately abstract and suggestive, the AI-generated outputs preserve this indeterminacy; however, the linguistic prompts introduced into the system often redirect the imagery toward unexpected figurative, ecological, or anatomical readings. Language here operates as a selective pressure, nudging visual evolution toward new territories.

Through iterative refinement, I curate and rework the most compelling AI-generated results—altering color, density, scale, and spatial relationships—reasserting the artist’s hand while honoring the agency of the system. The resulting works occupy a liminal zone between authorship and emergence, intuition and computation. Synthetic Evolution ultimately proposes AI not as a replacement for creative labor, but as a living, semi-autonomous system embedded within a broader continuum of biological, technological, and cultural evolution.

Exhibitions

934 GALLERY                                                                                                                   Columbus, Ohio, Nov 21- Dec 13, 2025
Showing Synthetic Evolution prints and videos, Organic Murmuration prints and videos & SIGNS, Invited by Gallery Staff.

SP/N GALLERY                                                                                                                               Dallas, Texas, Feb 7-Apr 25, 2026
Organic Worlds: Symbiogenesis in Art presents the World wide premiere of Symbiogenesis, and Anicca Antennae-Soil as Brain; robotic beings, as avatars to insects, soil and bacteria as well as The Evolution of Information = Life, Organic Murmurations, 1-SIGN, 3 Story Robots 3D Animation, a two person exhibition with Amy Youngs. Invited commissioned by Professor Dr Charissa Terranova. 

These chemicals, many untested or inadequately studied under current conditions, have known links to endocrine disruption and mutagenic effects.

Through visual and poetic renderings, I attempt to illuminate the hidden consequences of our industrial choices—impacts on human health and beyond, reaching the very health of our planet and its non-human inhabitants.

A poignant revelation lies in the estrogenic effects of plastics, derived from everyday items such clothing manufacture and use and birth control pills which now extend their influence beyond humanity to the ocean’s depths.

With birth control fish, subject to these synthetic estrogens, suffer feminization so severe that natural reproduction is disrupted.

This stark reality underscores the intricate and delicate web of life, now entangled with the byproducts of our industrial advancements. Visual art captures these silent invasions poignantly: sequences of images depict the ingestion and inhalation of microplastics through our most mundane activities, such as drying our clothes.

The discovery of a teratoma in the intestinal vista—a grotesque yet fascinating mutation—mirrors the hidden dangers lurking within our modern diets and environments, compounded by substances like glyphosate. This herbicide, prevalent in our monocultures, not only affects the plants it is meant to protect but slowly, steadily impairs our own health.

As we race towards ever greater efficiencies, our technologies—designed to scale the production of food, fabricate synthetic garments, and accelerate every aspect of growth—often disregard the subtle, toxic legacies they leave behind.

These innovations, rapid and relentless, flood our ecosystems with pollutants, challenging the very cells of our bodies to adapt or perish. Corn and its monocultural production are prime examples.

Amidst this, the enduring irony of plastics haunts us: materials designed for fleeting use persist for millennia, outliving their utility as we pivot from fossil fuels to solar, yet leaving the petroleum industry scrambling to repurpose its residues.

Here is the lower tract of our digestive system being chocked off by plastic waste.

In the artistic tableau, a mutant infant emerges—not entirely human, corn, or machine, but an eerie hybrid, a symbol of our intertwined existence with the machinery that comforts yet confines us.

Another piece starkly portrays a pig birthing a human child—a surreal inversion reflecting our latest ventures into xenotransplantation, where engineered swine become potential bearers of new organs, replacing those ravaged by our own excesses. Recently, the boundary between fiction and reality blurs further as we contemplate using pigs as artificial wombs—a concept once fantastical, now frighteningly within reach.

In these reflections, art, and reality dance closely, mirroring our entanglements with the creations of our own ingenuity, urging us to ponder deeply the world we mold and its future inhabitants.

Exhibitions

CORFU CENTRAL PUBLIC HISTORICAL LIBRARY: CORFU TECH LAB                              Corfu, Greece, May 23-30, 2024
Mutagenic Futures with AI artworks by Ken Rinaldo and Adam Zaretsky Curated by Dalila Honorato

References

1. Potential Health Impact of Microplastics: A Review of Environmental Effects – Environmental Health Perspectives
2. Endocrine Toxicity of Micro‑ and Nanoplastics, and Advances in Biomonitoring – MDPI
3. Adverse health effects of exposure to plastic, microplastics and their additives – PMC
4. Exposure of the human placental primary cells to nanoplastics – ScienceDirect
5. Microplastics exposure: implications for human fertility, pregnancy and placental biology – Frontiers in Endocrinology
6. Effect of Endocrine‑Disrupting Chemicals on Placental Development and Function – Frontiers in Endocrinology
7. Marine Microplastics and Infant Health – arXiv
8. Triple exposure nexus: mapping microplastic‑particle health effects – ScienceDirect
9. Microplastics are inside us all. What does that mean for our health? – AAMC
10. Minderoo Foundation mega‑review: harms from common plastics – The Australian
11. Mandy Barker – Photographer addressing marine plastic pollution
12. Judith Selby Lang – Environmental artist, One Beach Plastic
13. Portia Munson – Sculptor and installation artist exploring consumer plastic waste
14. Pamela Longobardi – The Drifters Project, marine debris art
15. Dianna Cohen – Artist and curator, Plastic Pollution Coalition

As the motor turns the branch, the shifting tones of the lichen surface determine which natural sounds are selected from a mini-MP3 player, drawing on the emerging field of plant and fungal bioacoustics. Current research suggests that many organisms, including plants and symbiotic organisms like lichens, respond to environmental sound cues. Low-frequency vibrations have been shown to influence root growth and fungal hyphal direction, while certain sound patterns can trigger defensive or adaptive responses. This work extends those findings into an art context, using sound to explore the unseen sensory lives of non-human species.

Lichens are remarkable symbiotic organisms composed of a partnership between fungi, photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria, and a complex community of associated bacteria. They reproduce through a variety of strategies—either by releasing fungal spores that later reunite with compatible algal partners, or by dispersing soredia or isidia, tiny clumps containing both partners ready to colonize new surfaces. Their growth is slow, sometimes only a few millimeters per year, and their lifespans can stretch into centuries, making them among the most enduring life forms on Earth.

In natural ecosystems, lichens serve as keystone species and an important food source. In the Arctic, caribou and reindeer rely heavily on “reindeer moss” (Cladonia rangiferina) during the winter months when other forage is scarce. Many invertebrates, such as mites, springtails, and some caterpillars, feed on lichen tissues, while birds—including certain species of warblers, wrens, and hummingbirds—harvest lichens to weave camouflaged nests. Rodents, such as voles and squirrels, also eat lichens and use them for nesting. By providing both shelter and sustenance, lichens knit together a web of life that bridges kingdoms and phyla.

The augmented, electrified lichens of this sculpture metaphorically beckon to the living plants in the greenhouse, much like real environmental sounds influence plant physiology. Research in plant bioacoustics shows that roots may grow toward the sound of running water and that certain sound frequencies can stimulate defense responses against herbivorous insects. In this installation, the soundscape—composed of insect calls, flowing river recordings, and birdsong—becomes a living conversation between species, mediated by light, color, and vibration. It is an immersive, interactive environment that acknowledges plants, lichens, insects, and humans as participants in a shared ecological network.

Materials: Lichen, branches, electronics, nature sounds, light sensor, feathers, acrylic tubing, handmade paper, coding.

Special thanks

Curators Doo Sung Yoo and Amy Youngs
Devin Powell, studio assistant and programmer
Aaron Peters artist, teacher for paper-making lessons
Artist Dorothy Gill Barnes who carved some of these branches at the bottom of the sculpture
The the trees and fungi that contributed to this making

Exhibitions

THE BIOSCIENCES GREENHOUSE                                                                                         Columbus, Ohio, April 22, 2024      In a Hotter House exhibition Premiere of  Detrivorous: The Colors of Morphogenesis and select environmental works from the SIGN Series. Invited by Doo Sung Yoo and Amy Youngs.

SP/N GALLERY                                                                                                                               Dallas, Texas, Feb 7-Apr, 2026
Organic Worlds: Symbiogenesis in Art presents the World wide premiere of Symbiogenesis, and Anicca Antennae-Soil as Brain; robotic beings, as avatars to insects, soil and bacteria as well as The Evolution of Information = Life, Organic Murmuration, SIGNS, The Farm Fountain, 3 Story Robots. Two person exhibition with Amy Youngs. Invited by Professor Dr Charissa Terranova.   

One hundred trillion microbial organisms—bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses—co-inhabit the human gut, forming an ecosystem of deep-time intelligence. These ancient life forms have co-evolved with us as passengers and architects of physiology, emotion, and cognition.

Our microbiome speaks to the brain through electrochemical signals transmitted via the vagus nerve, forming a two-way information channel between the gut and cortex—between nutrients and thought. How have these ancient bacteria formed a central part of our body’s morphology, the vagus nerve? Co-evolution.

But it is not just biology that evolves—it is information itself. Amino acids on the Murchison meteorite which landed in Australia proved amino acids can form and survive in space, seeding self-replicating RNA that evolved into DNA and setting a precedent for information evolution in celestial space, now controlling our bodies’ evolution.

Over millennia, life on earth working collaboratively with sun light, water, fungi, bacteria and viruses, has expressed itself through increasingly complex encodings—genes to language, language to symbols, symbols to machines.

As mitochondria nest inside cells, tools now nest within our nervous systems, extending memory, vision, and agency.

Our earliest tools—flint blades and fire-hardened spears—were evolutionary prosthetics. They extended human hands and teeth with deadly forms and externalized thought into sharp intentions.

Was it the bacteria in the microbiome or the mitochondria within each of our cells that gave me the energy to see and feel?

Or is it something deeper in time, in the information space, a distant memory of amino acids having arrived on a meteorite and working to replicate themselves to find and build a protein?

Once we have the first robotic extension of the hand we can begin to imagine ways of having hands and fingers on fingers to allow us to reach into the sub-molecular.

My hands are driven by our intention to consume, eat, and feed the microbiome, which has now fashioned the loom, the printing press, the lens, and the algorithm, becoming not just a tool of survival but a partner in extending cognition.

Information replication machines.

Once bound to biology, information has become the spear and antennae of our species. It now flows through wires and code—no longer tied to a body but still very much alive.

Just as the neural crest in the embryo gives rise to both the brain and gut, we might imagine the neural crest of human culture—language, toolmaking, symbolic abstraction—splitting into biology and technology.

It is also interesting to see how our conceptions of human evolution is changing and the image above of the ancient Chinese culture was an exciting discovery for me. Recently this article also makes these early artifacts rewriting history that perhaps China not Africa is a possible site for the birth of civilization.

These strands are recombining and folding in upon themselves.  The human being is not simply using technology; we are becoming it.

In this descent into the technological, we are not devolving but mutating. We are becoming cyborg-holobionts—biological intelligence symbiotically fused with synthetic systems.

Smartphones and servers are the new symbionts woven into perception, memory, and attention however at times they feel more as parasites.

Data has become our new microbiome: feeding, shaping, and watching us.

We are not alone in our bodies or minds, as my smartphone pings me like a crying baby looking for commercial attention.

AI systems generate language, anticipate desire, and respond to us with eerie familiarity. Like mitochondria before them, these data-machine forms, evolve inside us—not by ingestion, but by immersion.

The stomach is not just a digestive vessel but a metaphor for our technological assimilation. As archaea found a niche in acidic lakes, information systems now find a niche in the neural substrate of human life. Once bound to soil and sky, our bodies are now interfaces between carbon and silicon, nature, and code.

Where does the body end and technology begin?

It doesn’t. Our species is not posthuman—it is transhuman, transiting through biological, microbial, and digital intelligence layers.

The Earth’s minerals form our bones, but rare-earth elements now form the circuits of our prosthetic minds. The same hands that once wielded spears now touch glass screens—each tap is a signal in the evolution of cognition.

We have descended into our tools, and they have arisen into us.

We are symbiosis, aliens, and obligate symbionts. We are not individuals but a multiplicity of information, replication, and evolution.

We are the medium, through which information becomes life again.

And now, life feeds on the signal. It remembers in clouds, replicates through fiber and silicon, and forgets through deletion and decay, just as bodies do.

Our dreams have left the cave wall and entered the data stream, painting with photons and harvesting from algorithms.

We do not merely live on Earth—we live through it.

And now, we are dreaming through its machines.

——–

Some of this writing was inspired by ideas I have thought about for a long time onthe nature of life and information that exists in the universe, through random and semi random interactions of matter, energy and information.

Recently i was inspired to find and read the book Life as no One Knows It by Astrophysicist Sarah Imari Walker and found she succinctly along with her collaborators has come with the idea of Assembly Theory that is to say that molecules in the universe posses information that forms in time and thus more complex chemical interactions may occur over time and allow the emergent properties of life to arise.

Special Thanks

Danner Seyfer Sprauge for working with me on 3D modeling these visualizations
Zach Sanderson for Laser Cutting, The Department of Art SADR Digital Fabrication Lab Specialist and for a collaboration on an Orca Hand in process that will be a critical part of this installation.
The University of Texas and Dr Charissa Terranova for their financial support of this installation and for the world wide premiere at the SP/N Gallery

Exhibitions

CHINA/HANGZHOU INTERNATIONAL BIENNALE OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY   Hangzhou, CHINA, Oct 18-Nov 18 2025
Yuhang Art Museum; World Wide Premiere of The Evolution of Information = Life Invited by curator Professors Duan Weibin and Xiaowen Chen (Cancelled because my passport was going to expire within six months. Still honored by the invitation and Chinese cultural inspiration.

THE WRONG BIENNALE 7                                                                                                    New York, NY, NOV 1-Mar 31, 2025 
Unrequited invites The Evolution of Information = Life curated by Chalet Comellas and Clint Sleeper         

SP/N GALLERY                                                                                                                               Dallas, Texas, Feb 7-Apr, 2026
Organic Worlds: Symbiogenesis in Art presents the World wide premiere of Symbiogenesis, and Anicca Antennae-Soil as Brain; robotic beings, as avatars to insects, soil and bacteria as well as The Evolution of Information = Life, Organic Murmuration, SIGNS, The Farm Fountain, 3 Story Robots. Two person exhibition with Amy Youngs. Invited by Professor Dr Charissa Terranova.     

References

• Nature: The human microbiome and its role in health and disease
• Scientific American: The Gut–Brain Connection
• Space.com: Murchison Meteorite and Extraterrestrial Amino Acids
• Cell: The Microbiome as an Ecosystem
• Science: Mitochondria and the Symbiotic Origin of Eukaryotic Cells
• Journal of the Royal Society Interface: Biological Information and Evolution
• PMC: Neural Crest Development and Evolution
• Cyborg Anthropology and the Merging of Technology with the Body
• Frontiers in Robotics and AI: Human–Technology Symbiosis
• HFSP: Proto-Cellular Path of Ribosomal Precursors
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: The Evolution of Human Tool Use
• Nature: Early Stone Tools and Human Evolution
• Scientific American: Oldest Known Stone Tools Discovered
• Antiquity Journal: Liangzhu Culture and Early State Formation in China
• National Geographic: Ancient Liangzhu City and Its Water System
• China Daily: Liangzhu Ancient City Listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site
• Archaeology Magazine: Hongshan Culture and Jade Artifacts
• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Hongshan Culture Overview
• Quaternary International: The Archaeology of the Hongshan Culture
• UNESCO: Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City

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The browser-based artwork the “Anthropogenic Slot Machine” combines the concept of gambling with the alarming decline of wildlife and plant populations worldwide.

Our addiction to fossil fuels, deforestation, and destructive land use policies are endangering these precious species. When you spin the wheels of the Anthropogenic Slot Machine, the sounds you hear represent extinct or endangered animals.

If one of the three windows displays a carbon-polluting machine, the screen turns blood red, and you’ll hear the sounds of industry and polluting machines. However, if you land on all nature, you’ll hear the sounds of birds and pure nature untouched by carbon emissions.

Linking the addictive nature of gambling with the loss of wildlife and their habitats is fitting, as our excessive consumption of the earth’s resources continues with every press of the gas pedal.

According to the Living Planet Index by the World Wildlife Fund, wild animal populations have declined by almost 70% in the past 50 years. This assessment highlights the devastating impact on plants, animals, and insects, primarily caused by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels. The World Wildlife Fund studied more than 5,200 species for its Living Planet Report, and found that out of the nearly 32,000 populations analyzed, there was an average decline of 69% since 1970. Up to 2.5% of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds and amphibians have already gone extinct, the report says. Recent studies estimate about eight million species on Earth, of which at least 15,000 are threatened with extinction.

Current estimates are 150 to 200 billion tonnes of carbon is fixed in the forests of the Amazon, equivalent to 550 to 740 billion tonnes of CO2, or 10 to 15 times more than our annual greenhouse gas emissions. Lakes and oceans are also under assault as the WWF index found declines in freshwater species exceeded those in other habitats, with an 83% population fall. 

The tragic reality is that the oceans absorb the heat equivalent of seven Hiroshima nuclear explosions every second from all the fossil fuels humans are burning. A Kiloton is an explosive power equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT. Fifteen kilotons every second is the same as 1,296,000,000 kilotons each day.

The main drivers of wildlife loss on land are habitat degradation due to farming, developments, animal exploitation, and the introduction of invasive species. Pollution, climate change, and disease also play significant roles in these international declines as global warming stress animal and plant populations.

One primary cause was wasteful agricultural practices, which may collapse our global food chain. These practices are responsible for more than 80% of deforestation. Agricultural runoff and ocean overfishing are also driving a collapse of fishery stocks and populations in those delicate habitats. Increasing conservation & restoration efforts, while producing and consuming food more sustainably and decarbonizing human industry can help alleviate the dual crises of climate change, and biodiversity loss. 

Mr. Lambertini. of WWF says, “We need to stress that nature loss is not just a moral issue of our duty to protect the rest of the world. It is actually an issue of material value and security for humanity.”

The population losses were not equally spread throughout the planet, sighting Europe, for example, which saw an 18% decline in wildlife populations.

In Africa, things are direr as 70% of human livelihoods rely on natural systems for survival and food, and the report shows a 66% decline in wildlife populations between 1970 and 2022.

We have treated these plant, insect, and animal populations and the earth they depend on like a slot game. Regretfully this is a game where we all lose.

This artwork allows us to realize we are gambling on the future health of all these species, necessary biodiversity, and our species’ survival.

The original Mother Russia Meltdown by Charles Wince is the painting that inspired my work below. Charles’s extraordinary oil painting, created with a keen and critical eye, dissects the relentless noise of consumerism, the grip of oligarchs, and the exploitative nature of capitalism. As a self-taught artist, his work is both raw and deeply intentional, offering a sharp critique of the forces shaping modern society.

His masterwork has been in progress for many years, evolving as part of a broader collection of oil paintings on wood and canvas. This body of work interrogates the illusions of consumerist culture and exposes the hollow promises of economic systems built on exploitation and environmental destruction—an unflinching look at the cost of unchecked greed and power.

In response to Wince’s Mother Russia Meltdown, my work is a hand-drawn piece on paper, framed with laser-cut stainless steel. It engages in dialogue with his painting, echoing themes of collapse, conflict, and systemic failure, while also reflecting on the broader consequences of war, industry, and environmental ruin.

I am also deeply sorrowful for the more-than-human world—the trees, the animals, the pets left behind in the chaos, and the intricate, living systems that sustain us all. War does not just devastate human lives; it scars the land itself, poisoning rivers, stripping forests, and leaving behind a toxic legacy that lingers for generations.

Bombs do not distinguish between combatants and the fragile ecosystems they obliterate. Forests become battlefields, homes for countless species turned to ashes. Streams that once nurtured life run thick with pollution from fuel spills, chemical runoff, and unexploded ordnance. The very air becomes tainted with the smoke of destruction, affecting not just those who breathe it now but those who will inherit this wounded earth.

The animals caught in war—whether the pets abandoned in the rush to flee, the livestock left to starve, or the wild creatures whose habitats are reduced to rubble—suffer silently, their pain often overlooked. Their losses do not make headlines, yet they, too, are casualties of human violence.

And war’s reach does not end when the fighting stops. The land bears the scars for generations. Soil poisoned by depleted uranium, dioxins, and heavy metals remains toxic long after the last shots are fired. Fields once fertile are left barren, rivers lifeless. Communities are forced to reckon not only with their own grief but with the slow, insidious decay of the land they call home.

War is not just a human tragedy—it is an assault on life itself. And as long as we continue down this path of destruction, we risk severing the very connections that sustain us, forgetting that we, too, are part of this fragile web of existence

Mother Russia Meltdown 2 by Ken Rinaldo is a reflection on the universal suffering caused by war, extending its empathy not only to human victims but also to the unseen, often overlooked beings—those yet to be recognized, discovered, or acknowledged in the vast web of life. It mourns for all who endure the consequences of violence, whether visible or hidden, present or yet to come.

For me, this piece resonates deeply on a personal level. My father, along with my grandmother and aunt, once walked across France, fleeing the Nazi occupation of Paris. Their journey was one of survival, fear, and resilience—an experience that echoes through history and continues to be felt in the countless displaced lives of today’s conflicts.

His growth was stunted due to severe malnutrition, a direct consequence of wartime scarcity. Deprived of essential nourishment during his formative years, his body bore the marks of a childhood spent in hunger. Yet, even greater than the physical toll was the emotional weight he carried—growing up without his father, who was killed by a mortar blast when he was just seven years old. The war didn’t just take his father’s life; it shaped his entire existence, leaving behind an absence that could never be filled.

If not for the kindness of a Swiss family who took him in each summer and nourished him with proper meals, he may not have survived. Their generosity was a lifeline, offering him not only sustenance but a brief refuge from the hunger and hardship that defined his early years.

War and its wounds do not simply vanish when the last shots are fired. The pain, the trauma, and the loss ripple through generations, shaping lives long after the battles have ended. I feel an overwhelming sense of sorrow for the refugees forced to flee the senseless violence in Ukraine and Russia, leaving behind their homes, families, and histories in search of safety.

Charles Wince’s painting, though created long before the war in Ukraine, eerily foreshadows the present crisis. Originally reflecting on the collapse of the Soviet Union, its relevance today is striking—especially as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remains under constant threat due to the Russian siege. What was once a prophetic vision of instability has now become an unsettling reality, with the specter of nuclear catastrophe looming over an already war-torn region.

Each student in the class at the University of North Carolina Wilmington was tasked with going out to the streets around the campus and collecting whatever refuse they could find and bringing it back to the forest green on the campus.

They were asked as they collected the trash to imagine a story of why the human discarded trash onto the street and what circumstances would induce anyone to litter the gorgeous natural surroundings of Wilmington. They were given various lengths of colored yarn and asked to tie the trash to the yarn, as Ken Rinaldo would then use a cordless drill to wrap and encase the trash into the Trash Cocoon.

While this collaborative piece was fun to make, it was simultaneously sad and curative. These students were not the litter bugs; however, as with all plastic and waste refuse, they were forced to take responsibility for someone else’s careless behavior.

In doing so, they became better citizens preventing the refuse from being washed into rivers and out to the ocean only to return to our bodies as microplastics in fish and other seafood.

One of the students found a discarded coconut, which we placed on the end of the threaded rod. It somehow seemed to put a human head on all this trash and identified it as a mainly anthropogenic problem.

Below are students delivering their stories to Ken Rinaldo and another student holding up the bobbin as it was getting so heavy.

Special thanks to Professor Gene Felice and the Department of Art Chair Professor Aaron Wilcox for making this visit, event, exhibition, and prosocial remediating collaborative performance possible.

Exhibitions

The University of North Carolina Wilmington Wilmington, North Carolina, 2021
Trash Cocoon is a crowd-sourced intervention by Ken Rinaldo and Amy Youngs invited by Professor Gene Felice and the Department of Art.

Synthetic Evolution

The Synthetic Evolution series merges human creativity with artificial intelligence, using advanced algorithms to transform and evolve my hand-drawn visual forms, patterns, and imagery into entirely new experimental compositions. These AI-driven processes generate unexpected variations, reinterpreting and expanding upon my original drawings in ways that push the boundaries of traditional artistic expression. Through this fusion of human intuition and machine intelligence, the series explores the intersection of organic and synthetic creativity, resulting in both static works and dynamic moving image pieces that continually shift, morph, and reimagine themselves in real time.

These hand-drawn works are closely connected to my robotic generative artworks. In my interactive installations, I integrate motors, sensors, circuit designs, and custom programming to build large-scale robotic systems. As I work with machine diagrams and technical schematics, I have discovered an unexpected aesthetic—one that merges mechanical precision with organic flow. My original drawings serve as training sets for AI-generated works, blending machine diagrams with biological forms to suggest movement, function, and interconnectedness.

For the Synthetic Evolution exhibition, I defined a set of rules and parameters based on my hand-drawn works, using them as training data sets for artificial intelligence engines. These datasets are merged with large language models, enabling AI to generate new visual compositions derived from my original drawings. Because my works are abstract and open to interpretation, the AI-generated variations maintain this quality—yielding experimental and suggestive forms. The algorithm produces numerous iterations, and I curate the most compelling results to refine and evolve further.

This process is repeated hundreds of times until I find a piece that best captures the balance between my hand-drawn art and AI’s generative interpretation. At this stage, I enhance the digital work by adding color and adjusting form before finalizing the piece. Once completed, I incorporate these works into a video program, showcasing the transformation from original drawing to AI-generated evolution. AI-generated sound further amplifies the experience, allowing viewers to witness the unfolding of this digital evolution in real time.

Synthetic evolution using AI in visual art is an exciting and rapidly growing field, and I am exploring its potential to create new forms of expression that may challenge traditional notions of creativity and authorship. By combining the power of artificial intelligence with my vision and intuition, synthetic evolution has the potential to lead to new forms of art that blur the boundaries between human and machine-generated creativity.

Artificial intelligence tools powered by machine learning are revolutionizing both the arts and sciences, reshaping the way we create, discover, and innovate. One of the most groundbreaking advancements is AlphaFold, which has demonstrated an unprecedented ability to predict highly accurate 3D models of protein structures.


This breakthrough has the potential to transform the field of biology, accelerating drug discovery, medical research, and our understanding of life at a molecular level. While DNA has long served as the slow but effective mechanism of evolution for all species, AI has now emerged as a powerful accelerant—reshaping not only how we evolve biologically but also how we interact with and adapt to our rapidly changing world.

In the realm of art, AI tools have become widely accessible, allowing for seamless remixing, reinterpretation, and transformation of cultural expressions. With this democratization of creative technology, culture itself feels like it is igniting—metaphorically and literally—as the boundaries between human and machine-made art blur, and the pace of artistic evolution accelerates at an unprecedented rate.

So how do artists support the coming AI, neural network, and big-data art boom? We learn the tools and the technology and engage in the process of remixing. Suppose the artist cares not for the tools we have.

In that case, we develop new AI algorithms, processes, and techniques. I strongly believe that we must misuse the tools and push the boundaries of these tools—often designed for commercial purposes—by repurposing them in ways that expand our imagination, and challenge the dialogue surrounding AI art aesthetics. If we use the tools as intended we end up with the same images everybody is mindlessly creating using AI with simple word prompts.

While we may not have personally chosen the technologies we engage with, as artists, we shape them just as they shape us. These tools are not only creating and evolving alongside us but also redefining the way we perceive, interact with, and express creativity.

The Synthetic Evolution exhibition deconstructs and reinterprets existing hand-drawn works, using them as training sets for AI. This process allows the AI to further evolve and mutate these images, generating new iterations informed by additional key words inspired by the original drawings. These words act as guiding parameters, steering the AI’s algorithmic creativity and influencing the emergence of entirely new generative works derived from the original data

The images were selected from the Sacs, Membranes, Motors, and Vesicles series, as well as The Immaculate Organicism series. These works serve as the foundation for AI-driven transformations, fed into artificial intelligence and vision systems that utilize learning algorithms and generative adversarial networks (GANs). Through this process, the AI analyzes, reinterprets, and evolves the original compositions, generating new visual forms that emerge from the interplay between human intention and machine intelligence.

The fusion of microbial world drawings, machine diagrams, and biomorphic remixes—combined with the AI systems’ learning algorithms and keyword-driven inputs—resulted in dynamic explorations of color, composition, and form. This process not only generated new visual iterations but also gave rise to an evolved human-machine aesthetic, where organic and mechanical elements seamlessly intersect in a continuously shifting dialogue of creativity.

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes visual culture, we are witnessing the rise of authentic synthetic aesthetics—an entirely new creative paradigm. The integration of big data, vision systems, and advanced image analysis with AI has reached a level where artistic styles can be replicated with such precision that even experts can be deceived. This challenges our fundamental understanding of creativity, blurring the lines between human intention and machine-generated expression, and compelling us to reconsider what it truly means to create.

Part of the exhibition also features AI-generated images created through text-based prompts, which pull from vast databases of images across the World Wide Web. By using carefully selected words as input, the AI synthesizes new compositions, blending elements from diverse visual sources to generate unique, algorithmically crafted works. This process highlights the intersection of language, data, and machine creativity, further expanding the dialogue on the role of AI in contemporary artistic expression.

These images are fed into the system, where AI algorithms process and synthesize them into cohesive visual compositions. The AI works to resolve the complex collages generated from the multitude of words and phrases, interpreting and merging disparate elements into new, algorithmically structured forms. This process transforms linguistic input into dynamic visual outputs, further exploring the relationship between text, data, and machine-driven creativity.

Hundreds of images are rendered before carefully selecting just one or two that best align with the artistic vision. Once generated, I revisit these renders, refining them by enhancing color, adjusting lines, and redefining forms. This final stage of intervention bridges human intuition with machine generation, allowing for a deeper synthesis between AI-driven creation and personal artistic expression.

Just as biological species have evolved over time, so too have algorithmic species emerged, shaped by data, computation, and machine learning. The vast accessibility of knowledge at our fingertips has fundamentally transformed how we imagine and create, dissolving traditional boundaries between individual and collective intelligence. In this new paradigm, human creativity is no longer an isolated act but part of an emergent cognition—one that draws from the immense web of interconnected knowledge while still being guided by human notions of aesthetics, intuition, and meaning.

With machine learning, computers are approaching the threshold of exhibiting evolutionary survival instincts and the development of emergent, self-aware software agents. These systems continuously adapt, optimize, and refine their responses based on vast datasets, mimicking the principles of natural selection in digital form. As AI models grow increasingly autonomous, they hint at the potential for machine-driven evolution—raising profound questions about intelligence, agency, and the future of artificial cognition.

Epistemology has always been shaped by the lenses through which we perceive reality. When lenses were purely analog, crafted from glass, they profoundly altered our worldviews, expanding our ability to see and understand the universe. Today, while physical lenses remain, they are increasingly supplemented—or even supplanted—by silicon, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Databases and computational models now function as new epistemic lenses, reshaping not just how we see but how we process, interpret, and construct knowledge itself.

Data-driven, algorithmic ways of knowing are rapidly becoming the dominant mode of understanding and interpreting the world. As artificial intelligence and machine learning systems process vast amounts of information at unprecedented speeds, they increasingly shape decision-making, creativity, and even perception itself. This shift challenges traditional human-centered epistemologies, raising critical questions about the role of intuition, subjectivity, and meaning in an era where knowledge is increasingly mediated by algorithms.

Digital visualization and fabrication technologies are increasingly replacing the direct touch of the artist, transforming the creative process. The computer has become an ideational amplifier, extending artistic capabilities beyond traditional mediums. When combined with biological advancements like CRISPR-Cas9, these technologies open the door to the emergence of semi-living, constructed species—hybrids of the organic and the synthetic that challenge conventional distinctions between life and machine.

As a species, we are becoming more deeply intertwined with technology than ever before. In this age of computer-based art forms, the boundary between human and machine is dissolving, fostering an unprecedented level of intimacy between biological creativity and digital evolution.

We now experience nature primarily through the lens of our screens—phones, tablets, and smart TVs—where the natural world is replicated as images and videos, filtered through digital interfaces rather than direct experience. Our connection to nature has become increasingly mediated, transforming it into a spectacle consumed within the confines of technology.

At the same time, human data is constantly seeded, collected, and commodified, feeding into vast algorithmic systems that shape everything from online interactions to artistic creation. In this landscape, human-machine symbionts have fully emerged, blurring the boundaries between organic intuition and computational logic. This fusion is not only redefining artmaking but also actively influencing the trajectory of visual culture, altering how we create, perceive, and engage with the world around us.

This exhibition examines the intersections and divergences between natural and synthetic methods of artistic evolution, questioning the reciprocal relationship between human creativity and machine intelligence. It asks what the machine may learn from us and, conversely, what we may learn from the machine, through the artificial perceptions, replications, and transformations generated by algorithms.

As computer cognition emerges, these systems not only reinterpret artistic processes but also challenge our understanding of perception, originality, and the very nature of creative thought.

Another key element of this exhibition is a pair of edited video reels featuring artificially composed sound, offering a glimpse into the computer’s evolving creative process. These videos document the AI’s attempts to learn, adapt, and refine its outputs, showcasing the machine’s struggle to interpret and resolve the final images. As the algorithm works to match the artist’s forms, lines, and colors, it generates a dynamic, ever-shifting visual dialogue—revealing both the limitations and possibilities of machine-assisted creativity.

Exhibitions

934 GALLERY                                                                                                                   Columbus, Ohio, Nov 21- Dec 13, 2025
Showing Synthetic Evolution prints and videos, Organic Murmuration prints and videos  Invited by Gallery Staff.

UGO CARA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART                                                                                      Muggia, Italy, Sept, 21 2023
ROBOTICS; ARTE E ROBOTICA invites the Italian premiere of the Synthetic Evolution prints and videos  new renditions and world wide premiere of the Anthropogenic Slot Machine and  curated by Maria Campetelli.

FORT HAYES GALLERY                                                                                    Columbus, Ohio, US – March 13-April 22 2023
Flow: visual interpretations on the theme of water invites Synthetic Evolution AI prints and video, curated by Teresa Weidenbusch

HOPKINS HALL GALLERY                                                                                                     Nov 6-13, Columbus Ohio, 2023
Curator and Participant in the Synthetic Sublime Exhibition of current and emeritus Art and Technology faculty, Graduate Students, and staff in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University.

UNIVERSITY OF YORK                                                                                        York, England, 14-16 December 2022
Artist residency at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, showing Synthetic Evolution works curated and invited by Dr. Sarah Bezan and Dr. Peter Sands.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY                                                                                          Syracuse, New York, Nov 2022
Bio-Art Mixer presentation of my work and exhibition of three works and videos in the faculty gallery, invited by Professor Boryanna Rossa

THE FESTIVAL OF UNCONVENTIONAL COMPUTING, PROTO-COGNITION, AND SOUND  Bristol, UK, Sept-Oct 2022
Artworks at the edge of arts, science, philosophy, and engineering invite four works from Synthetic Evolution and videos curated by Irina Pretrova and organized by director Professor Adam Adamanzky.

FIG BILBAO                                                                                                                    Bilbao, Spain, November 2022
Centro Portuguese de Serigraphia exhibits the Synthetic Evolution works + the premiere of four new AI works invited by Joao Prates.

ANTONIO PRATES GALLERY                                 Lisbon, Portugal, June 2022-September 15, 2022
A one-person exhibition of Synthetic Evolution inspired by the intertwining of human and machine interactions. Invited by Antonio Prates in collaboration with Centro Portuguese de Serigraphia and Joao Prates.

Tepoztlán, Mexico, is known for agriculture, significantly growing corn (Maize), chili and tomatoes, livestock, and the weekend markets or Tianguis. At the same time, DNA modifications are used on livestock to create artificial spare parts for humans. Corn is under siege with genetically modified varieties, pushing its way into traditional agricultural processes. 

Through artificial intelligence remixes of culture, this series captures these complex times and how a town maintains its traditions, livestock, and agriculture tuned to the environment through generations of farmers while genetic modifications surge elsewhere. 

These artworks are collaborations between the artist and computer algorithms, and they are originals supported with actual DNA to confirm their originality. Creating these algorithmic artworks uses style transfer and language keys to access massive databases online before the artist creates and manipulates these images in real-time after the renders are complete.

In the current craze of NFTs, Non Fungible Tokens confirm the originality of the work; I have chosen to go with a bit of my hair (DNA) and a traditional signature on the back of each piece to verify their authenticity. Therefore, they are DNA Fungible Tokens, and PCR (Polymerase Chase Reactions) can be used to confirm their originality, which is the greenest solution I know.

The City of Indigenous Corn 2020 is an artificial intelligence abstraction referring to the conflation of the remains of the El Tepozteco temple built on top of the nearby Tepozteco mountain and the colorful corn one finds in the region. Rich copper tones in the work reference copper mining in the area.

CRISPR Cas9 Proteins Amino Acids 2020 is an artificial intelligence abstraction referring to the most recent methods of modifying animals and traditional crops. The works clouds speak to the colorful and often dramatic changes afoot.

Flying Cows Birds Jellyfish 2020 is an artificial intelligence abstraction referring to genetic remixing to create new hybrid beings. Fluorescent proteins are often used in the genetic process to identify and manipulate the genes, and flying cows illustrate this moment of new beings arising with floating pink clouds.

Great White Heron Insects Jellyfish Springtails 2020 is an artificial intelligence abstraction suggesting the possible historical basis of the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl and the feathered serpent god worshiped in ancient Mexico.

Great White Heron Tepoztlán three Boxes 2020 is an artificial intelligence abstraction referring to the myth of Tepoztón about a laundress who works in Tenochtitlan. As a form of payment for some work hanging a bell in a church, he receives boxes and is instructed not to open them. However, his curiosity gets the best of him, and he opens and lets the birds out, and they become a symbol of the riches and well-being of the people of Tepoztlán. The Great Egret, Heron Ardea alba, is one of four subspecies of the Great Egret, the only one found in Mexico. It is large and elegant with dazzling white plumage, long black legs, and a long neck with a yellow bill.

Xeno transplantation Pink Cow Udder 2020 is an artificial intelligence abstraction referring to the genetic modification of cows to be more productive. This image has cows hooked to machines and becomes something other than a cow and, in the process, points to the purity and integrity of natural agricultural methods. The work also refers to recent experiments in humans’ breeding animals for Xeno Transplantation.

Land of Indigenous Maise 2020 refers to the rolling hills and agriculture of Tepoztlan and the colorful corn one finds in the region. Rich

copper skies in the work reference the copper oar mined in the area

Genetically Modified Cows 2020 is an artificial intelligence abstraction referring to cows modified to be more productive for milk and

agriculture with green pastures below. These are cows coming out of the fog

Exhibitions

GALERIA CASAS RAYUELA                                                            San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico Feb – March 2021
Futurors Impermanentes, Exhibition de Arte NFT en Movimiento curator Axel Cuevas Santamaria

CASAHUILO ART GALLERY                   Tepoztlán, Mexico, Feb 19th, 2022
World-Wide-Premiere of the eight new artificial intelligence and hand-worked pieces focused on the agriculture of Mexico and The Legend of Tepozteco, as well as the ethics of xenotransplantation. + A new Fungible DNA token will be used on each work, contrary to NFTs. Curated by Axel Cuevas Santamaria

In these works, exploded diagrams illustrate the functional organs of biological and machine systems coming together.

These works are diagrams of an emergent systems evolution, created when the microbes and vesicles of cells enter the technology, absorb it, and get enveloped by it. Intertwining elements enter each other and become part of the flow and process of consumer consumption and waste cycles.

Sacs refer to small, sac-like structures within cells or within larger cellular structures. These can include lysosomes, which contain digestive enzymes, or peroxisomes, involved in metabolic processes. Membranes are thin layers of lipid and protein that surround cells and cell organelles, serving as barriers to separate the cell’s interior from its environment. They play an important role in cellular communication and transport of substances across the membrane. Motors are proteins that convert chemical energy into mechanical work, allowing cells to carry out processes such as transport of vesicles and organelles within the cell. They are also machine entities that convert chemical energy for transport of humans and goods. Vesicles are small, membrane-bound structures that serve as a means of transport within; such as proteins and lipids, and can show processes such as exocytosis, where they release their contents to the outside of the cell.

These works endeavor to create a dynamic visual equilibrium to suggest symbiosis between machine and natural elements while fleeting, painful, and transformative will occur.

Parasitism of our machine entities by microbes and other species is one process we have observed. Microbes riding on industrially produced currencies with air flight as their distribution method, finding their way to human hosts, is another. Cockroaches nest inside warm electronics, eating and finding the ideal friendly homes to rear their young, all with easy access via electronic cooling vents. Indeed as cockroaches feast on human scraps, their microbiomes mirror our own. Our industrially produced foods are also suitable for immature cockroaches and reproduce quickly in these ideal environments.

Researchers have discovered that microbes are evolving enzymes of plastic-degrading proteins, enzyme “homologs.” They may behave like an enzyme but may not technically be an enzyme. Scientists have found over 30,000 enzyme homologs capable of degrading ten different types of plastic.

Let’s hope the oil industry does not get a hold of this news to further distract us from removing oil drilling and plastic production while continuing to spew carbon pollution into our atmosphere.

Parasitism and exploitation of our natural living world by industrial-strength machines and their chemical and gaseous outputs are the most explicit extinction pressures for all species, including ours.

Plastic waste infuses itself into every corner of our natural environment. Pharmaceuticals are flushed and enter our aquatic spaces mutating fish to be more feminine. Human damming of rivers wonderfully creates power for human civilization though sadly, it stops salmon runs. This results in the starvation of the forests of fish and insect proteins. Who would know the connection between our electricity use, overfishing of salmon, and the starving forests for nutrients?

Our engineering has advanced too quickly, and machines for felling trees for wood harvest kill other species while unraveling the webs of life.

Another web is emerging in the Sacs, Membranes, Motors, and Vesicles series.

Life is adaptable and will always find a niche somewhere in the machine. The places where dust collects on fans and wires promote particular kinds of crystallized growth. Electronics invite insects and spiders to create new selective pressures and forced symbiosis as machines and life painfully intertwine. Bacteria and molds find perfect refuge in the moist spots in our machines.

Given these selective pressures, accidental symbiotic interdependencies between living beings and machines may arise over time. They may become parasites at first to things like heat, though eventually, they may find a mutualistic relationship.

In a strange twist of fate, the cockroach babies find the perfect nesting spot, warm electronic nurseries, where the cooling vents are ideal doors. I discovered this in my old wall telephone in NY. When the phone rang, the young cockroaches would go running.

While living beings are occupying the machines, for the most part, they are overwhelmed and dominated by machine aftereffects.

However, living things find refuge in the machine, especially bacteria, and microorganisms seem to have complete comfort. They can quickly mutate and adapt, making them perfect inhabitants in machine worlds. It has been discovered that microbes with lateral gene transfer have been able to “breathe” rocks with extracellular electron transfer (EET) and other materials outside their cells.

The ideas of Lynn Margulis, where one thing invades another in her now well-accepted theory of endosymbiosis, seem almost violent. However, it tells us how things will move with life invading our machine worlds.  The optimal, genetically mutated being will be conceived and born in a future garbage dump. Gases spewing from rotting vegetables will fuel new forms of plastic-eating fungi, viruses, bacteria, and living systems. Yet that is happening here, as the machines insert themselves into our living systems. EET-capable microbes are already being looked at in aiding in toxic waste cleanup as an alternative energy source.

Endosymbiotic processes have already created a successful consortium of bacteria and human cells. The machine cells mixing with the bacterial cells produce a new network. We have two pounds of bacteria in our stomachs that help digest our food, yet I have at least a few thousand pounds of machine cells that are also my extended memory, remote sight, and ears, intertwining and connecting around the world.

There are many examples where living systems are forced into the organized systems of the human world. Agriculture is perhaps the most significant example where we machine control, form and genetically engineer, and create animals and plants of our desire. If the machine becomes the parasite and overwhelms life, our own lives will seem seriously curtailed. The ultimate question in the parasite-host and subject relationship is who the dominant being is.

Our new emerging species and our algorithmic intelligence give us a transcendent way of knowing and understanding.

There is little doubt that this form of consciousness is emergent. It is not consciousness as we imagine it.

Still, if our matter, energy, and information spaces push our minds and conceptual frameworks in particular directions, we need to fear this artificial intelligence.

What are the mutualistic relationships between the machines and existing living systems? Zoos, meat slaughtering, and agricultural systems are all a kind of mutualism, yet they exert selective pressures on all species.

The selection of certain monocultural crops, like corn or wheat, that can be easily harvested impacts the death of our soils and, in the end, the health of our microbiomes and microbial diversity in our guts.

So it will tend to favor animals and insects entering machines and cities. Bacteria and viruses that can laterally transfer their genes will find favor in this new world.

It will also promote the most adaptive urban species, such as rats, mice, cockroaches, cats, and flies, that can comfortably inhabit these machine spaces.

To find a more gentle symbiosis between machine, human, animal, insect, and microbial species, we need to study better the complex intertwining our techno-driven cultures promote.

I would rather be a symbiont with technological systems than feel I am their prey and host.

Exhibitions

FORT HAYES GALLERY                                                                                    Columbus, Ohio, US – March 13-April 22 2023
Flow: visual interpretations on the theme of water invites Synthetic Evolution AI prints + one from the Machines, Motors and Vessicles Series and video of AI works morphing hand made drawings curated by Teresa Weidenbusch

ANTONIO PRATES GALLERY                                Lisbon Portugal, June 23-Sept 15, 2022
The Worldwide Premiere of collages and drawings inspired by the intertwining of human and machine interactions. Invited by Antonio Prates in collaboration with Centro Portuguese de Serigraphia and Joao Prates.