purposes. "The grass has a certain importance because of the simplicity of the blade," he explains, "By nature it slightly grows towards the light." It may sound odd to hear two people express such great reverence for grass. For every song of praise there is one of dissent. To Communist leader Mao Ze Tung it was symbolic of Western decadence. He hated the natural material so much that during one of his campaigns in the Cultural Revolution he had people rip it out with their bare hands as forced labor. At one point Ackroyd and Harvey admit that they were toying with the idea of creating a grass portrait of Chairman Mao. But for those with no prior knowledge of Mao's relationship to grass, such a piece would inevitably have a pop art connotation. This is not the way they would like their work to be perceived. They're the anti- Pierre et Gilles. They don't do celebrity portraits, nor do they identify their work with frivolous social self-references. "It's not about being kitsch," says Ackroyd. Theirs is a world where nature and technology meet in a delicate and cooperative dance.

Ackroyd and Harvey love grass, pure and simple. It's their medium of choice, and according to Harvey, the most efficient material for their purposes. "The grass has a certain importance because of the simplicity of the blade," he explains, "By nature it slightly grows towards the light." It may sound odd to hear two people express such great reverence for grass. For every song of praise there is one of dissent. To Communist leader Mao Ze Tung it was symbolic of Western decadence. He hated the natural material so much that during one of his campaigns in the Cultural Revolution he had people rip it out with their bare hands as forced labor. At one point Ackroyd and Harvey admit that they were toying with the idea of creating a grass portrait of Chairman Mao. But for those with no prior knowledge of Mao's relationship to grass, such a piece would inevitably have a pop art connotation. This is not the way they would like their work to be perceived. They're the anti- Pierre et Gilles. They don't do celebrity portraits, nor do they identify their work with frivolous social self-references. "It's not about being kitsch," says Ackroyd. Theirs is a world where nature and technology meet in a delicate and cooperative dance.

Their work digs up the issues behind this seemingly incongruous coexistence. There is one school of thought that sees Nature as anything that has always made up our earthly landscape (original, untouched materials). Harvey seems to espouse the newer Post Human definition of Nature that is becoming increasingly acceptable. "Everything around us is natural material that man has naturally developed." So, working with the scientists on the stay green grass seems to be, for him, a process of collaborating with nature to perfect it, rather than using technology as a way of effecting its extinction. "There is a science of fine-tuning to it," he says, "We're becoming much more capable of judging that." These words make Harvey sound more like a scientist than a photographer/artist.

But is there really such a difference? Even the biological definition of plant growth (through photosynthesis) is parallel to the technology of photography. This same idea is taken to another level (a genetic one) through the work of peer bio-artist Joe Davis, who created a work called DNAgraphy. His technique uses DNA to play the same role as emulsion would in photography, in creating figurative images that are viewed under a microscope.

Scientists are certainly known for dissecting and analyzing some very minute details. At the same time they are required to step back and take a bird's eye view of the entire process. They are often imbued with a sense of curiosity, an investigative spirit and an experimental nature. Replace the word 'scientists' in the above phrase with 'photographers,' and there's no need for further adaptation.

It is much easier to identify the aforementioned characteristics in the raw and unbridled work of the very early photographers--from blatantly techy inventions like sterophotography to Nadar's aerial photographs of Paris. Today, there is a danger of becoming too enmeshed in the culture of photography to call upon these basic concepts for inspiration and a sense of purpose. Ackroyd and Harvey's work favors nature over culture. Like Talbot and his ilk, their creative search takes them to the aesthetic of the natural world. For their predecessors this may have been a rudimentary task. But ours is a complicated age where nature, reality and the unreal are in want of new definitions. So is photography.

The Surrey, England based duo didn't invent this term; it was the name of an 1844 book by pioneer photographer William Henry Fox Talbot. Ackroyd and Harvey admit that their photography is greatly inspired by his work and ethos towards nature. They expose plots of seedling grass to light through a custom-made negative, which makes the grass grow in varying shades--from dull yellow to dark green. After a couple of weeks, when the growing process is complete--almost as if by divine intervention--faces or landscapes seem to appear in the grass. Just as miraculously as these lawn images emerge, so do they degrade over a short period of time--especially the fresh-air pieces. Talbot's aim was to capture nature's fleeting beauty and fix it on paper. But ultimately, photographs fade. So does grass.

The Centers for Disease Control already, in effect, do this by an age-old methodology called Contact Tracing, which surveys doctors and patients. The Google method is, however, 1-2 weeks faster, making it much more of a predictive early warning system. Though the corporation has no specific plans yet, its Google.org "Predict and Prevent" team hopes to expand this tool in the future to include other countries, languages and diseases.

Ackroyd and Harvey are painfully aware of this fact. For over a decade they've been fine-tuning this process, and for over a decade they've had to face the reality of its deterioration. Death and decay are key components and themes of their work. But, much like traditional photography, grass photography also has a life support system. While the actual piece can fade away and dry up, the negative and the process remain, providing future generations with the means and instructions to re-create that which has fallen into the clutches of mortality. "I don't think it will die out with our death," says Ackroyd. As much as the couple's work is about letting go, and experiencing decay as a natural process, human nature and the will to preserve often go hand in hand. More recently, the couple has been working actively with scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Wales to create 'stay green,' a form of grass that lasts longer than the regular material and is grown from a genetically modified seed.

All good creative intentions aside, it can't be too easy to sell highly degradable photography. "There's something very elusive about it, which is its power," Ackroyd chimes in. Apparently private collectors are interested in commissioning her and Harvey to do pieces for them. The grass team is only too happy to accommodate but tags in a disclaimer that if the client buys a piece he/she must keep it in low light or the image will fade sooner than later. "It requires a fluidity of sorts and an ability to accept some degree of transience within the art object," she adds.

Happenstance also played a big part in how Ackroyd and Harvey first discovered their creative medium. In 1989, during one of their first collaborations (entitled "The Other") growing an interior of a vaulted ceiling chamber, they had placed a ladder against one of the walls as part of the installation. The grass was receiving directional light as a result of the ladder's placement. One day, the artists looked up and saw that a 'shadow' of the ladder had been cast on the grass. And so grass photography was born. "It took another year to express it as a living grass photograph, but the seed of the idea was implanted at that point," says Ackroyd, using all-too-appropriate language.

Just as much as the element of chance gives birth to new forms of creativity, there is also a scientific, experimental process of trial and error. The grandfathers of photography, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and of course Talbot, all operated on then-tentative territory at the nexus of science, invention and art (invention being the link between science and art). The work of these men, in some ways, mirrored the spirit of the times-Darwinism, and the search for perspective and reality in the pre-industrial world.

Today, at the dawn of another technological shift-- the biotech era-- it makes sense that Ackroyd and Harvey's work is growing increasingly popular. Theirs is an equally interdisciplinary terrain. Ackroyd's background is in the visual arts and theatre. Harvey's is in sculpture and architecture. And they've added in biology and photography to the mix. Neither of them formally studied or worked in photography (though, Harvey's father was a professional photographer) but somehow it was an appealing framework for their creative concepts.

Ackroyd and Harvey love grass, pure and simple.
It's their medium of choice, and according to Harvey, the most efficient material for their