Rocky Mountain Cryptoflora Field Guide

2022- (WIP). photogrammetry/3D scan, 3D modeling, virtual habitat, artist book

Cryptoflora Field Guide is a project that is in the initial experimentation work in progress stage. The project imagines potential plant taxonomies that flourish in a post-human landscape inspired by research into the present situation between plants and people amongst the semi-arid foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. A virtual 3D modeled herbarium, interactive habitats, and field guide in e-zine and printed formats will be accessible through a central website. Hypothesized plant hybrids are fantastically fictional, yet based upon projected outcomes of native, invasive, and threatened botanical species essential to the fragile ecosystem along the Colorado front range. The future archive focuses on existing vascular and non-vascular plants that have developed evolutionary survival adaptations in response to regional effects of global warming characterized by drought and forest fire. Virtual space and new media technologies are used to re-invent the practice of a naturalist through non-intrusive material methodologies that can be implemented by citizen scientists.