Jorinde VoigtBotanic Code

A botanical garden is characterised by the international composition of its vegetation, the reproduction of the entire world in miniature, categorisation, the formation of terms and names, and the study and preservation of species. For the project „Botanic Code“, Jorinde Voigt spent a year (11/2009–10/2010) walking through the botanical gardens of the cities she was able to visit during her travels. So far she has developed „Botanic Codes“ for the botanical gardens of Sydney, Berlin, Göttingen, Mexico City, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne and Bonn; those for Rome, New York and Paris will follow next. In this work the performative element of her drawing is transferred to the movement of the walk, to the route by which one crosses the garden. That, too, is subject to a spontaneous decision. The walk follows the premise of examining perception with regard to the reception of colours. The proportional colour fields produced by means of an algorithm developed for this purpose are transferred onto three-metre-long aluminium rods of varying thickness. The visits to the botanical gardens result in a group of lacquered aluminium rods: an algorithmically developed „code“ that addresses the walk and the perception of the parameters colour, proportion, performation, season, norm and infinity, and thereby creates a new matrix for perception.