From herbaria to Artificial Intelligences: nature in a posthuman perspective

My conference aims to reflect on the ideologies that influence the representation of nature. The starting point will be the tradition of herbaria, books in use since ancient times that contain representations of plants, information on their virtues and harvest methods. I will analyze the Codex Aniciae Julianae, an example of a discourse on nature that uses the inventory technique to represent it. Next, I will analyze some contemporary works by Sofía Crespo, automated herbariums that question visual patterns and the expectations we have about what is "natural". In both cases, I will highlight how representation becomes an ideological codification and I will explore the dialectic between transparency and opacity. Finally, through comparative analysis, we will see how the collection of natural types has moved from the universe of referent to the systems that feed artificial intelligences. In this way, we will be able to observe a change in the discourse, from the ideologies of the natural to the techno-ideologies of nature.