#47 Psycoalyx Major

The plant series was created as an ongoing project. Its aim was to create short works which would allow me to experiment with different writing methods.

This allowed for a quantity over quality approach.

The titles were programmatically derived with the selection of a botanical plant name from an online database. The series itself became a branching, genetic structure, in which the works themselves began to relate to each other like plants within taxonomies.

Each piece was restricted to be one side of A4, although many of the works in the series are much shorter than that.

The act of naming the works after plants allowed for their modelling as a tree-like structure, with genomic variation and taxonomical branching. Each small idea was either repeated and studied or varied. Some took hours to write, some took a few minutes. Each work is designed to stand alone, some as simple concepts, or whole structured compositions.

Initially the series was created to combat writing paralysis. I had been creating algorithmic work which meant that I had to build extensive frameworks which generated the material. The feedback cycle was far too slow to try to form a practice of compositional craft and attention over time. The plant series offered new solutions.