Living Dead: On the Trail of a Female

Living Dead: On the trail of a female is a biodiversity focused art-science project using drone technology and aerial mapping to locate a female partner for one of the rarest plants in the world, the Encephalartos woodii. Although an Encephalartos woodii was not located, it highlighted the promising possibility of using drone technology to locate rare and endangered species. Future scopes include expanding the search area, aerial mapping and analysis with machine learning. The outcome was a series of maps and a documentary of the process that was used to create a video artwork to highlight the impending biodiversity crisis (using this species as an example). It is hoped that the work and the process behind it will be beneficial for species conservation in the future.