Buttercup (Canticle of the Creatures)

As developments in Artificial Intelligence rapidly advance and technologies of our own making threaten our lifeworld, we are led to reassess established relationships between humans and the non-human. Buttercup (Canticle of the Creatures) draws on 3D scans of historic sculptures with representations of animals depicting scenes of hunting and slaying. Source scenes include the Roman Farnese Bull (AD 222-235), Samson Rending the Lion (1604-1607), Hunter Slaying a Stag (1838), and Hercules Fighting a Serpent (1824). Troika have edited these monuments to the anthropocentric perspective to omit the human figure, bar arms and hands. Flipping the traditional subject-object relation of heroic tales, the human limbs suppressing the wild become incorporated as the extremities of a fantastical new being.

Read more about ’Buttercup’ in ’Pink Noise’ by Nadim Samman & Dehlia Hannah, in ‘Pink Noise’, pp.5, published by Distanz, 2025