Variations is inspired by the changing understanding of nature in the 21st century. Using John Stockton's colour digital prints made from collaged materials and stencilled paint, juxtaposed with his black and white photographs, the book reflects the increasingly ambiguous distinction between artifice and nature. Shared cultural ideas of nature, inherited from literature and landscape art, were shaped by the myriads of photographs produced in the 20th century. In the Anthropocene epoch, even the accelerated pace of digital photography does not capture the essence of nature as revealed by science. Navigating our course through 21st century choices presented by geoengineering and synthetic biology can only be made more difficult by the barrier that the history of landscape art presents to the incorporation of new knowledge of nature from science into broader culture. Perhaps art can help us to talk about how we regard our increasing control over what has been known as the natural world? Variations is informed by both the oversimplification of nature associated with non-objective art and the illusions of realism inherent in photography. In the 21st century the most significant aesthetic will be one that is influenced by the diffusing dividing line between what is naturally occurring and what is artificially created.