Artist and designer from Cologne Hannes Hummel has long been interested in the intersection of digital tools and nature. Previously collaborated on an extensive collection of artificial specimens, Hummel’s latest project pushes the boundaries of floral design to a bizarrely beautiful place.
There are eighty unearthly botanical displays Hybrid varietiesa vast herbarium of imagined organisms. Translucent petals lined with bright veins, pistils dripping with a sticky liquid and leaves twisting like tubular tendrils propel the hyper-realistic flowers into an otherworldly realm.
A large part of Hummel’s work consists of plugging photos and natural patterns such as tessellations and fractals into digital programs. For this series, he trained an AI model with his own images and 3D models, exploring the tools’ personal generative potential without integrating the copyrighted works of others. He writes:
Just like in nature, sometimes the process takes an unexpected turn and sometimes feels random, while at other times it follows a clear path and reveals new possibilities. This intersection between human imagination and machine-driven innovation is what fascinates me most in any floral design. This series depicts nature not as it is, but as it could be: reimagined, reimagined and rendered through algorithms.
A fraction of Hybrid varieties is shown here, so go to Instagram for more digital creations from Hummel.
