Digital Seed Bank

Digital Seed Bank was a research project that began with the digital imaging of seventeen varieties of medicinal plants. It was originally produced in 2009, in consultation with New Mexico’s Seeds of Change organic seed and soil research facility. The project has since been reconfigured into various formats, including digital imaging workshops, and has been used for creatively organizing biomedicinal image banks. Digital imaging technology is used to determine physical characteristics of seeds, such as size or stress cracks. Visual identification of seed attributes is useful in researching quality, for cataloguing purposes, and for identifying traits of a specific sample or collection, for example, in order to see what a contaminant seed looks like; to read the fine features of a small-seed crop (like a medicinal herb); or for identifying unfamiliar visual features (which is often the case with native species). These techniques signify an important visual development in botanical representation, seed sharing security, and natural science studies.