Using complex algorithms to explore non-human ways of keeping time, Anna Ridler’s Circadian Nocturne features AI-generated animations of night-blooming and night-scented flora: queen of the night cactuses, the moonflower, night-blooming jasmine, or evening stock. Painterly petals slowly blossom into a dreamlike garden, chronobiological clocks set against the mechanical and digital structures that set the pace of our contemporary lives, all thanks to a high-tech machine that can keep time at an atomic level. Circadian Nocturne—a variation of a previous project titled Circadian Bloom—also combines modern, computerised timekeeping methods with the often unpredictable and imprecise imagery created by autonomous digital software. This piece is part of an ongoin project exploring time and technology. Welcoming this tension, Ridler visually obscures tech-based accuracy with something more organic and in sync with the natural landscape.

Anna Ridler is an artist and researcher based in London.  She is interested in systems of knowledge and how technologies are created to better understand the world. She is particularly interested in ideas around measurement and quantification and how this relates to the natural world. Her process often involves working with collections of information or data, especially self-generated datasets, to create new and unusual narratives across a variety of mediums, and exploring how new technologies such as machine learning can be used to translate these for an audience. Her work has been widely exhibited in cultural institutions worldwide, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Photographers’ Gallery, the Barbican Centre in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, HeK Basel, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Ars Electronica festival in Linz.