Through the intermixing of synthetic, natural, animal and human substances I explore the conflicted relationship our culture has constructed relative to nature. This was originally inspired by a nine-year experiment in selectively breeding my own specialized line of show rabbits. My obsession with the pursuit of the "perfect rabbit" was a way in which I could feel I was affecting the natural world. It was a powerful feeling; however, the fact that I was directly shaping these animals according to a human agenda was disconcerting. Selective breeding requires the "non-selection" of many animals. I quit the rabbit-breeding project long ago, but my interest in the desire to experience an idealized version of nature by technologically controlling it remains. My work engages viewers in a visual, tactile and auditory realm, to elicit a dialogue regarding the relationship between technology and our changing concept of nature and self. I am interested in the way that our increasingly enhanced and extended human capabilities allow us to perceive the world in micro and macro modes, explore it more thoroughly and even make attempts to remedy past ecological errors. That technology can simultaneously ruin, reveal, reinvent and repair nature is a paradox I investigate in my work.

– amy m. youngs