Latvian artists Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits use artificial intelligence (machine learning) algorithms to visualise the evolutionary processes of flowering plants in order to show how they are affected by rapid climate change. The new artwork AI Herbarium is a part of Solarceptors (2025), a new series of immersive artworks based on artistic research on flowers and plant intelligence, visualising the invisible processes in nature, how light affects the growth and flowering of plants. AI Herbarium and virtual reality installation Solarceptors are on view at the Among Plants exhibition in Bad Homburg/Fraknfurt, Germany until August 17, 2025.

“Solarceptors” series has been developed within the framework of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) funded research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant (2022-2025).

The new artwork is part of the artists' exploration of plant intelligence, tracing the origin and evolution of flowering plants - what Charles Darwin (1879) once called an “abominable mystery”, unable to explain either the rapid emergence of flowers or their explosive evolution - why so many different species, colours and shapes of flowering plants emerged at once, in a very short period of time.

The Solarceptors art research project and AI Herbarium artwork by Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits will be developed in a new direction in collaboration with Plants_Intelligence project team, as well as Jurģis Peters and Colin Edward Hughes, using artificial intelligence to create speculative visualisations (a series of animated images) about the impact of climate change on the evolution of flowering plants in the past and in the future. 

Artificial intelligence (machine learning algorithms) will be trained to show the diversity of natural evolution and the diversity of flowers. The artists' vision will take viewers on a journey that begins 100 million years ago, when flowers began to multiply rapidly in an astonishing variety of shapes and colours, marking their own ‘green big bang’ evolution of life. Artificial intelligence will be used to generate images of 100 herbarium plants, visualising the explosive proliferation of lupins in the Andean highlands, which solve Darwin's mystery by showing that evolution can proceed much faster than previously thought.

Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits. “AI Herbarium”, AI artwork in the Solarceptors series, 2025-ongoing. Training AI models. (Sketches from experiments).

Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are artists, founders of RIXC Center for New Media Culture (Riga), curators of RIXC Art Science Festival and editors-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal and book series Acoustic Space. Rasa is a professor at RTU Liepaja Academy, New Media Art Programme, Raitis is a professor at the Art Academy of Latvia, Visual Communication Department. From 2018-2021, they were lecturers at MIT Boston, and have lectured in Germany, Switzerland, USA, Canada and elsewhere.  Together as an artist duo, they create visionary and exploratory digital artworks and immersive experiences, collaborating with scientists to address environmental and climate issues and using data visualisation, extended reality and artificial intelligence technologies.

Their immersive artworks have been nominated twice for the Purvītis Prize 2019 (Microworld Oscillations, Purva Radio, 2018) and the Purvītis Prize 2021 (Atmospheric Forest, VR, 2020), as well as nominated for - International Public Arts Award - Eurasian region 2021, awarded (Ars Electronica 1998, Falling Walls - Science Breakthrough 2021) and shown widely, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Latvian National Museum of Art, the House of Electronic Art in Basel, the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz and other venues, exhibitions and festivals in Europe, USA, Canada and Asia.

https://smitesmits.com/