C-Lab

08/06/2025

At the heart of this project is a plant so rare that it stands on the brink of extinction. This plant, the Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a cycad classified as ‘extinct in the wild,’ is known from a single pollen-producing specimen found in South Africa’s oNgoye Forest in the late 19th cent...

12/05/2025

Delighted to present ‘Becoming Female’ (2025) at H for Hybrid WIZARD LAB (Milan), curated by Gabriela Galati from 6th May to 13th June 2025. This constellation of images and artefacts capture fragments of our project in motion, tracing the intersections of history, search, (de)extinction, and transformation.

Focusing on the ‘Encephalartos woodii’, a rare cycad with no known female, surviving today as clones from a single male plant discovered in South Africa over a century ago, ‘Becoming Female’ combines tissue culture, chemical augmentation with genetic tools to explore the possibility of producing a female. Alongside scientific experimentation, we are also searching the forest for a surviving wild specimen using drones and AI.

Becoming Female (2025 - )
C-LAB (Howard Boland & Laura Cinti)

15/01/2025

✨ How Artists Are Using Generative AI to Celebrate the Natural World ✨

Artists are embracing generative AI as a ground-breaking medium, moving beyond prompt-based generation to create ethical and innovative works.
This week’s Golden Nugget by Calpyso Newman explores the new generation of artists crafting accessible ways of multi-sensory storytelling by using generative AI to communicate and elevate data sets.

Read Calypso’s thoughts now at https://www.ukcreativefestival.co.uk/post/how-artists-are-using-generative-ai

Written by creatives for creatives, Golden Nuggets is your online hub for thought leadership, industry news and bold ideas. From articles and interviews to insights from top creatives, this platform is a treasure trove for those looking to push boundaries, challenge norms and spark conversations.

📸: AI in the Sky (2024), Film Still © C-LAB

12/01/2025

The solitary male specimen discovered in South Africa’s Ngoye Forest highlights an ecological crisis, as E. woodii requires a female counterpart for sexual reproduction. The project AI in the Sky by Laura Cinti integrates multiple technologies and methods to locate a potential female E. woodii using drones, multispectral sensors and artificial intelligence technologies. At the heart of the project is both an artwork and a story that negotiates the intricate relationships between humans, technology, and the natural world. Laura Cinti's essay focuses on the conservation of Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a rare cycad on the verge of extinction, through the lens of data-driven technologies.

Read the full essay: "On the hunt for the missing female" in Antennae issue #65 - Dataism

Image: Laura Cinti, AI-generated image using a diffusion model demonstrating the use of synthetic data to train AI to detect cycads, 2024 © C-LAB.

30/12/2024

C-LAB’s Howard Boland, alongside Emmanuel Davis and Peter Ujhelyi, showcased ANIMO RX - an intelligent wireless building blocks system - LEGO meets Minecraft at Science Museum! Audiences watched their creation come to life instantly in 3D. In a two-player Christmas-themed showdown, participants race to recreate a build as quickly as possible. It was super to see everyone having SO much fun!

17/09/2024

An article highlighting our research using drone technology and AI to search for the female counterpart of a rare male cycad on the verge of extinction. Many thanks to Sarah Kuta and Smithsonian Magazine for featuring our research!

The only known wild Wood's cycad was discovered in 1895, and it has since been cloned into many male trees. Now, researchers are scouring a forest in South Africa for an elusive female specimen

11/09/2024

Delighted to share my interview for Rock Badger discussing how drones and AI are helping us locate one of the world’s rarest plants and the interplay between technology, art and ecology. Thank you, Calypso Newman for your interest in my works and for the interview!

Link to interview:

Laura Cinti is a research-based artist working within the intersections of art, science and technology. She is currently leading a project using drone technology and artificial intelligence to search for a female counterpart of an extremely rare male cycad on the verge of extinction. Laura’s artwo...

21/06/2024

C-LAB's Howard Boland video using Open AI’s Sora featured at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week!
The video was developed with Accenture Song & Droga 5.

Droga5 founder David Droga is one of the first creatives to experiment with OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video tool.

20/06/2024

Happy to share that my article on using drones and AI to search for extinct in the wild E.woodii has been published in The Conversation. Many thanks to The Conversation UK & University of Southampton

Link to article:
https://theconversation.com/searching-for-a-female-partner-for-the-worlds-loneliest-plant-232088

The plant has been propagated worldwide, but every surviving specimen of Encephalartos woodii is a male clone – and without a female, natural reproduction is impossible.

26/04/2024

Domenico Quaranta talks about 'A View from Above', an exhibition opening next week featuring 'AI in the SKY' (sneak peak of 'AI in the Sky' in the video).

Group show curated by Domenico Quaranta, Salvatore Vitale with Samuele Piazza - at OGR Torino - Binario 2

The exhibition addresses verticality both literally and metaphorically, as a way of seeing the world that replaces the granular, fragmented experience of reality with an holistic view that takes into account different perspectives, and includes layers of information, allowing new forms of intimate knowledge.

Artists: James Bridle, Laura Cinti, Mario Giacomelli, Mishka Henner, Hiwa K, Tabita Rezaire, Evan Roth, Susan Schuppli, Tomas Van Houtryve

More info: https://www.exposed.photography/.../pro.../a-view-from-above
AI in the Sky: https://www.c-lab.co.uk/projects/AIintheSky

15/04/2024

Delighted to be showing 'AI in the Sky' (2024) at the International Festival of Photography in Torino (Italy) -- A View from Above -- from 2nd May until 2 June 2024.

https://www.exposed.photography/en/programme

Curated by Domenico Quaranta ( ), Salvatore Vitale ( ) and Samuele Piazza ( ) - at - Binario 2

"In recent years, the view from above, a perspective once exceptional and reserved for powerful individuals and non-human agents such as birds, angels, and deities, has become widespread and accessible. At the OGR in Turin we present and analyze this topic with the relevant exception of Italian photographer Mario Giacomelli - , whose aerial views from the Sixties and Seventies anticipate ways of seeing later embodied in satellite and drone views, all works belong to the last two decades and respond to the broader topic in many different ways:

by visualizing the apparatus that makes vertical perspective possible and emphasizing its ambiguous nature as an instrument of vision, control and war (James Bridle - ); by hijacking satellite vision (Mishka Henner - ) and drone vision (Tomas Van Houtryve - ) to address their gaze over the watchers, their social habits and power structures; by repurposing technologies of control and exploitation into a tool of environmental knowledge and conservation (Laura Cinti - ), or into instruments of forensic investigation of ecological disasters (Susan Schuppli - ).

The exhibition addresses verticality both literally and metaphorically, as a way of seeing the world that replaces the granular, fragmented experience of reality with an holistic view that takes into account different perspectives, and includes layers of information, allowing new forms of intimate knowledge, as in the works of Hiwa K - and Tabita Rezaire, and a new experience of the landscape and of our modes of representation (Evan Roth - )."

https://www.exposed.photography/en/programme

OGR - Officine Grandi Riparazioni -
Corso Castelfidardo 22 - Turin

14/04/2024

Sadly, many cycad species are threatened in South Africa, especially the Encephalartos group, with four being classified as extinct in the wild due to poaching. For anyone interested in cycads or learning more about them, please feel free to attend.