Ginsberg collaborates with synthetic biologists to create eau de Leucadendron and her latest:...
Where others might seek to reconstruct a woolly mammoth from centuries-old sequences, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is part of an interdisciplinary project to recreate the scents of plant species lost to human colonial destruction of their habitat.
For her art installation Resurrecting the Sublime, she collaborated with the scent researcher and artist Sissel Tolaas and the biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks.
Were the synthetic biologists reticent to enter an artist or designer's studio?
How did the extinct flower aroma project come about?
Resurrecting the Sublime started with Ginkgo Bioworks' co-founder Jason Kelly saying, "Would it be possible to use synthetic biology to reproduce the smell of an extinct flower?" To Ginkgo, whose customers include fragrance companies, the idea of using synthetic biology as a creative force was really powerful.
In 2016, Christina Agapakis, Ginkgo's creative director, went to the Harvard University herbarium and took tiny tissue samples from the specimens of extinct flowers in their collections.
Which were the three flowers you chose to resurrect?
We built these synthetic versions of each flower's overall smell.
Hibiscus flowers don't really smell, as they are bird pollinated.
In the version at the Natural History Museum, Bern, Switzerland, visitors enter the back of the diorama, turn the corner, and suddenly find themselves in a room containing no sign of living nature, just its traces: limestone boulders, the smell of the lost flower, the soundscape of its lost habitat, all whilst being watched by others.