Aniko Meszaros's research and practice involves the design of complex environments comprised of responsive and metamorphosing elements, both natural and artificial. Research into ingredients of natural organic and inorganic phenomena combine everything from insects and plants to rainstorms with the technologies of immersive digital interface, artificial intelligence and biotechnological engineering to form the basis of her unique investigation towards practical implementation.

Aniko's formative education is in architecture, having received degrees in Environmental Studies and Architecture from the University of Waterloo in Canada and her Masters with distinction from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, UK. While living in London, she began to develop a methodology for the Plant Anima project in collaboration with the Microbiology department of the University College of London.

Initially developed as an instrument of architectural invention, the Plant Anima project utilizes the tools of biotechnology for the creation of cultural devices. It proposes an immersive and reflexive world generated through unique transgenic plant organisms that are wired yet vegetable, responsive yet independent, artificial and alive.

Biotechnology proposes new possibilities of aesthetic invention and the exploration of ideas of beauty. The possibility indeed exists to begin literally to conceive and design the world of nature and its elements. Individual plants, groupings of species, and even entire ecosystems, can be crafted biologically with the precision and control of production methods within creative traditions. The design of a new nature can extend beyond its historical position within the practices of topiary and agriculture into the creation of entirely new vegetal territories of habitation.

Currently, biotechnology uses the technologies of genetically engineering living organisms to carry out defined chemical processes for industrial application within medicine, agriculture and industry. These interventions into the human environment have, up until now, been made in a very small physical scale: the pill, the seed, and the computer chip - applications that have proved very commercially lucrative. However there is an increasing concern that although these technologies provide the opportunity to design at the genetic level, rather than seeing an increase in the diversity of plants through hybridization, a new monoculture of ecology has been introduced.

Biotechnology has been predominantly used in the cloning of existing hybrid strains that exhibit desired qualities or in the extraction of undesired DNA characteristics of existing types. Plant Anima extends the proposition that the technology can be used to increase the diversity of living species by designing new hybridized and genetic types. It also proposes that genetic design can develop beyond its current role within commercially sponsored research and development, to become a creative tool.

The methods and practice of biotechnology have the potential to transform the role of the artist or architect in relation to the creation and construction of cultural objects. Potentially, a new "genetic" artist/architect can develop unique organisms by manipulating strands of DNA and then watching the organism grow itself. Moreover, by utilizing the methods derived from biochemistry and microbiology, this process would never become static or complete, but through direct intervention and redefinition continue to grow, adapt and respond to creative desire.

The primary creative role is at the level of DNA. Design becomes the invention of the colour, forms, responses, growth speeds and other physical qualities of the new plant species. In genetic creative production, the project would not be conventionally drawn and constructed. The "drawing" would exist within the immediate landscape, constantly and continuously metamorphosing in form, colour and typography. The design process is more akin to an orchestration of the materials that comprise life. The instruments transform throughout the performance; the violin becoming an oboe that is stroked.

By working with the composition of DNA characteristics, the designer is allowed not only to engage the forms generated by the process, but to design the responses and behaviours of the living and interactive organisms, taking a very deliberate involvement in the principles of embodiment. One can now compose the auras of the substances themselves.

The primary function and nature of this pursuit is the study and creation of meaningful aesthetic perception. This goal lends poignancy, for while Plant Anima is a creative methodology involving processes derived from technologically positivist ideals, the engineering task remains ultimately at the service of beauty.

• Plant Anima Project