Mia Forrest

The artist.

Mia is a multidisciplinary Australian artist.  Her practice is an overall testament of her reverence of nature as muse, in which her work is exclusively bound to the natural world.  Mia engages with digital tools, generative processes (computer and analog), and biodata to create artworks (digital, dry media, textiles). Her process often evolves (bio)data into data sonification, visualization and/or materialization, to evoke new meaningful ways to connect with the natural world. The convergence of technology x nature - perceived binaries - reconsiders how one can influence the other in how we see, process, and feel the natural world, particularly as we enter the digital-age.

In her emerging years as an artist, Mia’s work has been recognized by the Arab Bank Switzerland Digital Art Prize (finalist, 2024), Wollumbin Art Award at the Tweed Regional Gallery (Emerging Artist Award Recipient, 2022), Yarilla Arts and Museum STILL: National still Life Award (finalist, 2023) and the York Botanic Art Prize (finalist, 2023), and exhibited through Unit London, Vellum LA, Tweed Regional Gallery (Australia), and participated at international art fairs including West Bund Art Fair (China) courtesy of Art Pharmacy, and Art Basel (USA) courtesy of National Geographic and TIME magazine. 

Mia holds a Bachelor of Music (performance) from the Queensland Conservatorium, and Masters in Film from Griffith Film School.

Magnolia is composed of 4032 hand-embroidered cotton stitches on a grid-based cotton cloth canvas. Embedded within the geometric abstraction is a cryptographic aleatoric notation derived from the rhythmic biodata of the magnolia. Recognized as one of the first flowering plants during the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, the magnolia is a primordial bloom that embodies wisdom and perseverance due to its existence within and throughout deep time.

To retrieve the biodata of the magnolia, sensors are directly attached to the plant to record the changes in electrical conductivity that transpire through the stomata, a direct channel between the plants’ internal autonomous systems and the conditions of the external world. Each significant change within the stomata is communicated to the sensor, initiating the recording process. This biodata is then sonified and notated as a rhythmic composition, where each embroidered line signifies the duration of an 1/8th note, encoding the magnolia's biological rhythms into geometric harmony. 

Conforming to the principles of aleatoric composition, the rhythm is dependent upon chance and randomness determined by the magnolia's disposition at the time of recording. The stitches articulate a rule-based compositional procedure that notate the “beat” of the magnolia, effectively putting a stable frame around an autonomous system in flux, utilizing tangible material expression to contingencies that constitute the world external to the magnolia. 

The choice of stitching with two color values nods to the most basic form of computer code: base-2, wherein two binary values are utilized to constitute conversation, or in this case, rhythmic notation.

The textural low-relief of embroidery encourages touch and tangibility of the digitally recorded provenance, crafting the concept of stitching as storage, where textiles store, index, and arrange data in meaningful ways that allow us to access and recite ephemeral data. 

The artwork is inscribed on sat # 1945185800000000 (Aug 9, 2023, 11:56 AM), a sat that was mined on the day the magnolia biodata was originally obtained.