Lay down.
Breathe.
Let your thoughts wander.







Smell the Roses, 2023
Suzanne Schneider
Video Art & Projection

ARTIST STATEMENT

About a year ago, I got the call. My older brother was unconscious, bleeding from his brain, and I needed to find my own way down to Georgia to see him. For the next month, I spent every day alone with him in the hospital, sitting in silence for hours. Not knowing when or if he was going to wake up. When or if he was going to be okay. When or if he would be the same. This period of my life was filled with uncertainty and a complete loss of control.

During this time, I found peace by hiking throughout Georgia in solitude. Observing the fractalized patterns found in nature gave me a sense of familiarity as I remembered the childhood trails my brother and I once explored together. I thought about other loved ones I had hiked with, the intimate conversations we shared, and the support system I had unknowingly built through these experiences in nature.

Later in the year, as my brother began to recover physically, I realized that I was still processing the trauma of what had happened. Winter had arrived, and with it came the resurfacing of darker childhood memories— memories of my family abandoning me throughout my life, especially during holidays. Memories of my brothers beating me as a teenager. Memories of the fear of abandonment that shaped my childhood slowly crept back into my life. These fears began to consume me, leaving me feeling lost and confused. During this period of intense emotion, I found myself craving that same sense of familiarity and support once again.

Because of how still and lifeless Indiana feels during the winter, I began exploring vast worlds of 3D fractals. I became drawn to a particular fractal form that reminded me of a field of flowers, offering a sense of comfort and a space to explore my emotions. Using artificial intelligence and a single photograph of flowers, I generated a landscape of a never-ending, blooming field. This process resulted in a meditative video work that brought me the same sense of familiarity and support I had been longing for, and helped me begin processing my trauma.

Smell the Roses is a meditative video art piece that invites participants to take a break from the demands of everyday life— to lay down, breathe, and explore their own thoughts and feelings. The work also engages with current conversations surrounding the ethics of artificial intelligence, proposing a quiet, contemplative way of integrating the technology into an artistic practice.

PROCESS & TECHNICAL APPROACH

Phase One: Authored Source

Phase Two: Structural Environment

Phase Three: Iteration Processing

Phase One: Authored Source Material

Smell the Roses begins with a single photographic image of flowers. The photograph functions not as a static reference but as a mutable dataset. The image was digitally altered to establish chromatic intensity and pattern density, forming the visual substrate for subsequent transformations.

Rather than prompting a generative model to synthesize new imagery, the project anchors itself in a singular authored source. All later transformations remain materially tethered to this origin point.

Phase Two: Structural Environment Creation

To introduce spatial and structural complexity, 3D fractal environments were constructed using Mandelbulber. These fractal systems were developed as navigable image spaces rather than final outputs. Still frames and camera movements extracted from these fractal zoom environments served as structural scaffolding.

This stage introduces recursive geometry and infinite spatial logic — systems that echo the visual density of the original floral pattern while destabilizing perspective and scale.

Phase Three: Iterative Neural Style Processing

Neural style transfer (via ProGamerGov’s implementation) and EbSynth were used not to create new compositions, but to iteratively reprocess the authored and fractal materials.

The workflow involved:

  • Applying style transfer between altered photographic frames and fractal renders

  • Reintroducing outputs as new inputs

  • Repeating transformation cycles

  • Selectively curating intermediate states

Through this recursive looping, visual information degrades, amplifies, and mutates. Traces of the original photograph persist but become increasingly unstable.

Rather than treating AI as a generative endpoint, it functions here as a transformation engine within a closed system.

SMELL THE ROSES EXHIBITIONS

Big Art Show 2023 → Paisley, United Kingdom 2023
a rose is a rose is a rose → Bloomington, Indiana 2023
ART meets SCIENCE → Baltimore, Maryland 2023
AI: The Next Evolution → Chimaera Gallery 2023
When All Dreams Come True → Toronto, Canada 2023
B.F.A Thesis Exhibition Show → Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 2023