A blastema is the tissue a body forms to regenerate something it has lost. It is made up of progenitor cells capable, for a time, of changing state and giving rise to something else. They don’t have a fixed form yet. They are going to become something different.

This project starts there and pushes the idea into a place where biology no longer applies: insects whose tissue, instead of regenerating as insects, begins to behave like plant matter. Lichens, moss, mycelium, fungal fruiting bodies. They are not placed on top. They grow from the same tissue, as if the cell had switched sides.

The process: each specimen begins as an image, is reconstructed in 3D, and ultimately becomes a Gaussian Splat rendered in real time through our own GLSL shaders. This is where it truly comes alive. It is no longer a fixed model, but a structure that scatters light and changes according to the viewpoint.