Design Dialogues
This week concludes the first term of the MDEF program. Following is a summary of the proposal for a final project based on the ideas that I have developed in the past months.
Display
I choose to display my project proposal on a coffee station that our group fabricated in the second week of the course.The mushroom growing kit that is part of the station was the inception point at which I got interested in non-human networked intelligence.
As part of the display I propped up a plant with temperature, humidity, photovoltaic and capacitive sensors. The data from sensors was charted real-time on an online dashboard that could be viewed on a tablet next to the plant along with additional project references.
Originally, I have only connected a single plant but during the presentations, based on jury’s comments, I have used crocodile wires to connect the remaining plants in a series so touching any of them would trigger a spike in the touch indicator. This rather minor adjustment has significantly improved the storytelling capacity of my display. Now I have actually created a small illustrative network of plants that can interface with our man-made digital network, albeit in a primitive manner.
Visit display website (optimised for tablet viewing as part of the display)
The Internet of Plants
The discussions with different members of the jury stimulated me to expand my thinking beyond an isolated box-like item towards a broader system of connectivity of beings, cross-species communication, meta-consciousness and meta-cognition in the context of Anthropocene.
To that end I intend to explore the notion of plants as an human-Earth interfaces and sensors in themselves. The idea is to attempt to connect natural ecosystems with man-made networks in a meaningful manner.
Two themes that repeatedly occurred accross discussions were that of vegetal perception of time and isolation of plants in cities and households. Therefore the main challenges for my project are discovering potential methods for translating plant-time into human-time and finding means of interconnecting plants that do not share the same substrate.
How can we bridge the disparate temporal and spatial scales in human-plant interactions?
Going beyond fungi
Since the beginning of the term my ideas for the final project were revolving around mycelium. The metaphor of fungal networks as nature’s internet has inspired me to explore non-human intelligence. I have initially conceived of the project as a sensor-enabled networked mushroom growing kit but the jury has overwhelmingly agreed that going down the less travelled path of cross-species intelligence, perception and communication is a more worthwile endevour.
The primary goal of my final project is to design an artefact, with both physical and digital representations, that will amplify the idea that nature and everything in it is intelligent and sentient. Besides a delightful plant-human interaction, the overarching aim is to provoke an emphatic response that would make people reflect on our relationship towards other living organisms on this planet.
On a more pragmatic note, this emphatic device would ideally also include an interface that would provide people with actionable insights regarding the overal wellbeing of their household plants.