Prompted by the luster of a stray visual, a poster perhaps for an orchid show, or orchid inspired jewellery — I found myself exploring the form. One of the contemplations was the New Testament bible verse “… consider the lilies, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these…” Indeed. Solomon serves as an overlap of mage, gnostic, sybarite — a figure who simultaneously occupies the spaces of religious, occult, and ecstatic literature, so the juxtaposition with the lilies (and here by default, orchids) is striking… It gave license to indulge in some of my favourite things with an animist slant: West African pantheons, Heian court aesthetics, samurai warrior chic,  Eleusinian mysteries, Harper’s Bazaar editorials circa 1968… This is the thought process that gets poured into the AI.

William Gibson once said “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” I’ve always reconfigured this idea as the future already having arrived, except we just don’t recognise it. So perhaps we don’t need new tech, just advanced perception. Don’t forget to smell the flowers.