Jenn Karson | Lifelines
Lifelines, 2025
18” x 24” ink work on 20” x 28” Bergo Chorus Art Gloss Cover Paper, created with Sakura Pigma Micron 08 felt-tip pens and plotted using a Bantam Tools ArtFrame™ 1824.
Artist Statement: Phytomechatronics is a speculative framework I developed to envision technological advancements that nourish, rather than extract from, biological systems. For this series of Lifeline artworks, I collected leaves damaged by caterpillars and insects from tree groves in Westchester County. To symbolically heal and restore each leaf, I used machine learning—trained on my team's original dataset of healthy, intact leaves—to reconstruct the missing sections of the damaged leaf margins. (Margins is a botanical term referring to the outer edge of a leaf, which defines its overall shape.)
The infill of each Lifelines leaf was inspired by a study of plant lines that define a plant's vascular structure and my observations of lines drawn by machines based on their system efficiencies. Through the precise movement of the Bantam Tools robotic drawing system and the fluid character of archival ink, each work is a conversation between technological precision and organic form.
Jenn Karson
Jenn Karson uses scientific processes and technologies as creative catalysts. Her art practice weaves tactile techniques with generative algorithms, transmuting digital data into architectural forms and visual languages. These artifacts, with their porous boundaries, challenge conventional divides between the artificial and the natural, creating a space where technology and nature converge. Through her Plant Machine Design Group, she advocates for Phytomechatronics: a speculative framework for technology attentive to the vital futures of plant, animal, and human soft bodies.