Silva Ex Machina #18

Alfredo Salazar-Caro’s “Silva Ex Machina” is an animation centering on a scan of a sculpture of Xōchipilli, a Machika deity whose name translates into “flower prince” in the Nahuatl language. Xōchipilli is associated with flowers, hallucinogenic plants, medicinal herbs, music, and dance. Both the statue and its base are covered in carvings of morning glory and other flowers, as well as sacred and psychoactive organisms such as mushrooms, suggesting transformation and the transmuting of energy. Created with generative geometries and AI, Salazar-Caro’s animation shows blossoms and plants sprouting from the rotating statue, extending the abstracted engravings into a luscious, naturalistic repre...View all