
Using complex algorithms to explore non-human ways of keeping time, Circadian Nocturne features AI-generated animations of night-blooming and night-scented flora: queen of the night cactuses, the moonflower, night-blooming jasmine, night phlox, and evening stock. Painterly petals slowly blossom into a dreamlike garden — chronobiological clocks set against the mechanical and digital structures that set the pace of our contemporary lives. Created with artificial intelligence and a high-tech machine that can keep time at an atomic level, Circadian Nocturne also pairs modern, highly precise computerised timekeeping methods with the often unpredictable and imprecise imagery created by autonomous digital software and is part of an ongoing project exploring time and technology. Welcoming this tension, Ridler visually obscures tech-based accuracy with something more organic and in sync with the natural landscape. An artist-designed mobile app featuring a smaller, single screen version of the project and an original musical score by composer William Marsey will accompanies the Times Square presentation of Circadian Nocturne, allowing for more intimate experience of the work from anywhere in the world.

What is interesting is that there is no definitive list of night -blooming flowers – it is often not deemed important to record in the same way – so I had to piece together the various night blooming and night scented flowers by intense research and talking to academics and botanists to create a training set, some of which I grew myself over many months in my garden ~ Night-blooming flowers are often white, in order to appear like the moon to pollinators that they need in order to survive ~ The original presentation at Times Square was designed so that human scale became the size of an insect, bring about a quietness and acknowledgment of own small place in vastness of universe. ~ Tradition of watch parties, where you wait all night to see the ephemeral beauty of the flower
Eudora Welty, The Golden Apples, 1949The app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store here and from the Google Play Store here.