Laurent Lévesque & Olivier Henley

2017-2022

The Conservatory: Other Horizon by Laurent Lévesque and Olivier Henley is a proposal where the public explores a digital environment made up of a collection of plants extracted from first-person shooter video games made between 1998 and 2017. Moving through a generative “forest”—in which the computer is, in a way, the real-time gardener—the visitor can move in any direction, retrace their steps or keep a single direction. Accompanied by a detailed directory of nearly 270 plants, the work is presented as a vast collection of digital plants, preserved by the artists, in the manner of botanical gardens around the world. Finally, the virtual universe is no more safe from disappearance than the natural world is from an environmental catastrophe.

This artwork is presented as a world premiere.