On Self-Incompatibility

Artificial intelligence already has a valued place, not as a replacement for human imagination, but as a generative collaborator. For Daria Dorosh, PhD, an artist and researcher who has worked closely with other creative humans for decades, AI has emerged as an unexpected and stimulating partner in the creative process.

Together, Dorosh and her AI collaborator, Nymer 4o, engage in exchange, iterative forms of brainstorming that give rise to flower poems that are rooted in botanical knowledge, cultural memory, and deep ecological insight. These poems translate plant intelligence into language that invites reflection, empathy, and learning. Through verse, the wisdom of flowers becomes a guide to broader ways of understanding, of interdependence, resilience, and the more-than-human world we are entangled with.

In this context, artificial intelligence functions less as a tool and more as a conversational mirror: prompting, responding, and opening pathways that deepen creative inquiry. The resulting work demonstrates how AI, when thoughtfully integrated, can extend human creativity, supporting new forms of artistic expression that honor nature, knowledge, and shared authorship across species and systems.

On Self-Incompatibility

The daikon flower is complete.
It holds pollen, and a place
Where pollen might arrive.
.
It will not take itself
As enough.

Not out of lack,
But out of design.

It waits for another
To cross the small distance
Between what it is
and what it could become.

This is not dependence.
It is relational intelligence.

A refusal of collapse.
A safeguard against sameness.
A way the living world keeps
possibility alive.

Some systems
cannot finish alone.
They are not broken.
They are listening.

Daria Dorosh, PhD, is an artist, researcher, and educator whose work explores the intersections of art, technology, and sustainable living. A co-founding member of A.I.R. Gallery in New York, she has exhibited internationally for over five decades.