"The Mountain-Islands Shall Mourn Us Eternally (Data Garden Dolomites)" is a comprising CGI animation, a powerful speculative work, part fiction, part fact, Goni conjures up an “oracle”, from the regional plant Saxifraga depressa, which addresses the human audience on behalf of all species. Using graphs and simulations, it shows how global warming is forcing certain plants to retreat further and further up the mountain until – inevitably – they become extinct. It warns us that the same fate awaits us, while giving a fragile kind of hope (for rebellion, resistance or legacy?) by informing us of a decentralised alliance of “technoshamanic interspecies communities” that are being spread around the planet and preserving their digital memories in plant DNA, as “data gardens”. Embedding data in plant DNA sounds like pure fiction, but is, apparently, a current scientific research project. The calm, very empathetic English female voice of this oracle – entirely AI – spookily strikes just the right balance between fatalistic and sympathetic, articulating a feeling of alarm and mourning for a very plausible future.

My areas of activity were:

Modelling & Texturing

Animation

Rendering

Compositing

media artist (Greece)

comissioned by Biennale Gherdëina