An Algorithm for Empathy: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker

Speaking with me from her studio at London’s Somerset House on a golden summer afternoon, renowned British artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg effortlessly shifts between the scientific and poetic registers. One moment, she is ardently describing her favorite science experiment (the E. coli long-term evolution experiment by Dr. Richard E. Lenski), the next she reflects on whether a foxglove for a long-tongued bumblebee could be a sublime experience.

Daisy’s latest project Pollinator Pathmaker embodies the same spirit of whimsical alchemy, bringing the cool logic of optimization together with the warmth of compassion. A growing global constellation of gardens algorithmically optimized to welcome the most pollinating species possible, Pollinator Pathmaker is inspired by a radical understanding of inter-species empathy. These gardens are not meant for us—they cater to the tastes and perceptions of pollinators rather than our own. ‘We can look after these artworks and enjoy them,’ Daisy explains, ‘but they’re not for us to consume.’

Pollinator Pathmaker exercises an ethic of responsibility towards the keystone species that hold our ecosystems together. Originally commissioned by the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, Daisy conceived the project as part of its Create a Buzz initiative that aims to raise awareness of the dramatic and precipitous declines in pollinator populations around the world. Asked to design a sculpture about pollinators, Daisy opted to design one for them instead. She asks, ‘If pollinators designed gardens, what would humans see?’

Meticulously researching pollinators’ modes of perception (did you know that bees can’t see the color red?), Daisy was motivated to experiment with an algorithm to de-center the human experience from garden design. With it, she sought to create an ‘altruistic technology’ that wouldn’t serve humans but would ‘actually protect other species from us.’ Defining empathy as maximizing diversity of pollinators, Daisy prepared the algorithm for public use. She also illustrated 450 beautiful digital plant paintings that come together in shifting kaleidoscopic patterns to visualize the algorithm’s designs. Anyone can go to the Pollinator Pathmaker website and create their own optimized garden design as a unique digital edition.

While ‘digital edition’ might conjure up notions of NFTs, Pollinator Pathmaker separates itself from that landscape by offering free unlimited editions to the public. ‘It’s the opposite of how value is seen in the art world, where scarcity equals value,’ Daisy explains. ‘Here, abundance equals value; mutual flourishing equals value.’ Rather than celebrating atomized rarity, the project advances a vision of an increasingly inter-connected and ecologically sound community: ‘Having two editions really close to each other is aspirational because your edition will support the one next door and the one next door supports yours because there’s more forage.’

Pollinator Pathmaker’s ambition is not to make bitcoin billions on OpenSea, it is to become the world’s largest climate-positive artwork—and that can only be done by mobilizing the public at large. Daisy explains that ‘the digital artwork is really only a tool to achieve the end result, which is a garden. The value is in planting and caring for your own edition. It’s not about what’s on your computer—the manifestation is years of tending something.’ In this sense, Pollinator Pathmaker can be understood as a three-dimensional project: digitally, it produces a virtual edition of an algorithmically optimized garden design; physically, it plants living gardens geared towards pollinators; and mentally, it sensitizes and humbles us by revealing the universe of non-human perception beyond the limits of our senses. It encourages us to take up a new (yet ancient) relation with the earth.

Informed by an ironic sensibility, Daisy enjoys making use of ‘the most complicated technologies to bring attention to the destruction of the natural world.’ Much of her body of work touches on ‘our fraught relationships with nature and technology.’ ‘I’m interested in the human obsession with lifelike-ness and creating life rather than preserving it,’ she explains. ‘Why does the society we live in prioritize investment in AI, synthetic biology, or lifelike-ness, rather than the really amazing intelligent life that already exists?’ Referring to her deepfake birdsong installation Machine Auguries (2019), Daisy notes that ‘it takes artificially creating a dawn chorus for people to sit down and listen to the dawn chorus.’ Similarly, Pollinator Pathmaker brings attention to the needs of keystone species by means of a digital interface and a fancy, cutting-edge algorithm. Sometimes, that is what it takes for us to really stop and smell the roses—or, in this case, plant them.

I was surprised to learn that prior to her foray into the Pollinator Pathmaker universe, Daisy did not identify as a gardener. Growing up in the UK amidst the weighty history and ambient mystique of English gardens, her first exposure to the practice was trimming hedges in her father’s topiary garden. She fondly recalls jousting with him over the question of control in practice of ornamental gardening, shaping plants solely to fulfil human visions. But she reflects that all gardening, whether wrestling a hedge into the shape of a leaping dolphin or setting up one’s very own Pollinator Pathmaker garden, shares the red thread of human intervention. The former is no more ‘natural’ than the latter: ‘A Pollinator Pathmaker garden is artificial, synthetic, but the ambition of it is to serve other species before serving ourselves.’ And that mental shift is critical.

For too long, we have not extended an empathetic eye to insects, which are so often feared rather than loved, more likely swatted than savored. For generations, we have been socialized to resist their presence as an incursion into ‘human space.’ I offer my own flustered reaction to anything buzzing near me as evidence. Daisy reveals that Pollinator Pathmaker has also come up against this social scaffolding: ‘In talking to people who want to potentially commission these gardens, the health and safety question comes up: “Will we get swarms of insects?” And I say, “Well, hopefully!”’ She laughs, ‘I find it really amazing, but I can completely understand those considerations as well. We’re unused to having nature in our urban environment.’

While the threat of too many insects or too much nature, still haunts us, the rift between humans and nature (humans and insects, in particular) may finally be on the mend. In March, the UK’s Royal Horticultural Society opted to eliminate the negatively connoted term ‘pest’ from its vocabulary. Slowly and belatedly, insects are benefitting from a wave of positive PR. Pollinator Pathmaker continues this momentum, encouraging more virtuous relationships with pollinating species. For Daisy, blooms from the fertile ground of empathy: ‘the story I’m exploring as an artist is how we transform ourselves from consumers to caretakers.’

The Berlin based art foundation LAS (Light Art Space) is founding international commissioner of Pollinator Pathmaker that will generate the first ‘edition garden’ for Europe’s continental biogeographic region in May 2023 and will invite the public to play a central role in the rehabilitation of pollinating insects by planting their own.

Pollinator Pathmaker was originally commissioned by the Eden Project with the support of Garfield Weston Foundation. Additional founding supporters Gaia Art Foundation and Light Art Space and collaborators Google Arts & Culture. The second Serpentine Edition Garden was presented with special support from Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation and Google Arts & Culture.