NATURAL DESELECTION (2006) is an instrument that competes plants against each other. The device empowers plants to control the fate of others using sensors and mechanised shears in a Darwinian race for survival. The sensors set above the plants detect the first to grow to a specified height, at which point it is saved, and the others fatally chopped.
The instrument exists firstly as an installation that engages viewers in suspenseful anticipation, while the outcome is a perversely desirable product; a genetically superior plant that carries with it the sweet psychological value of being a champion.
