It’s been a while since I’ve seen works which connect ideas of networks and organic or biological forms together since Organism, the great weblog that looks at “making art with living systems” run by Douglas Repetto (previously posted on his work Crash and Bloom) has slowed down and is currently looking for someone to take over. (previous post about some works on Organism)

Botanicalls, again from the ITP winter show, is one such work which does this successfully creating a mutually beneficial network between house plants and their human cohabitants. The work immediately stood out in the show for me (both as someone who could only see this online and a lecturer looking at student work) and 90% of the reason for this was due to the very good documentation of the work, text, clear diagrams (see above) and photos. The works aims and objectives are very clearly explained on the background page of the site:

Our concern about bringing plants into the ITP community was their chance of survival– high-paced technologists seldom have time to stop and smell the flowers, let alone water them. ‘But, what if,’ we wondered, ‘the plants could call us and tell us what they needed when they needed it? If they assigned us tasks, would this alters[sic] or engages us,’.

The goals of this project:

1. Keep the plants alive through an interdependent relationship with co-habiting humans by translating the communication protocols of the plants (leaf habit, color of foliage, droop, etc) to more common human communication protocols (email, voice phone calls, digital visualizations, etc). More than keeping individual plants alive, we want to keep the system and project alive.

2. Make a connection between people and plants. Explore/enhance/create/visualize people’s emotional connection to plants, the ways plants help humans, how caring for a shared resource can create sense of community, how natural life is a valuable counterpoint to our technical environment.

3. Gather data, create a complex and dynamic network, documentation for do-it-yourself style propagation of the project, record process.

Note: for works on similar themes see, Life Support Systems - Vanda (plants used to generate art work), several of Miya Masaoka’s pieces (employing plants and insects), Andrea Polli’s work (which she coins as Eco-Media) and writing, Generative Social Networking (using phone networks).