This series of digital photocollages applies Darwinian concepts of genetic variation, mutation, and genetic drift to technology, imagining cameras and microphones as autonomous, living things in the earliest stages of evolution. Printed at a large scale, the images are mostly vertical and imposing, suggesting the tension between presence and aloofness found in traditional portraiture and in more modern day advertising.

The collages include variations of morphology (body type) and functionality (method of capturing data). Some are directly related to individual species, though most are more broadly in conversation with adaptations such as compound vision (dragonflies, crabs), multispectral imaging (shrimp, birds), and more dispersed forms of light reception (jellyfish, plants).

Inspired by recent scientific discoveries around plant and animal consciousness, and the increasing plausibility of synthetic consciousness found in AI, this project suggests the limits of our own knowledge-building tools when compared to the expansiveness of nonhuman knowledge.