Machines hum in the garden, 

tendrils of metal and circuits entangled with roots, 

performing through the act of possession. 

This digital harvest: converts beings into yields, 

crops of data cultivated by invisible proprietors.

These lines blur: as machines tick and whirl 

alongside the long necks of clocks and organs,

animating the garden yet belonging to neither life nor machine entirely.

In this garden, the inanimate animate, 

feeding from and into the soil,

the plot lines bending to algorithmic precision. 

The cocoon as an incubator,

whether the “natural” remains untouched, 

or if all life has now become a process 

— a product in a machine-fed cycle. 

The garden breathes, 

whose lungs power it?

Automata listen,

respond to the bête-machines!

Breathing through their rivets in their mechanical bodies, they straddle the divide between the organic and the artificial, 

hovering on that narrow ledge where “natural” dissolves, 

where vessels seem alive, yet are choreographed, pre-conditioned by unseen hands.

This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.