"Ooz is an attempt, commissioned by an arts organization in the Netherlands, to create a place where animals interact with humans by choice rather than because they're caged. The project explores whether science has learned how to design habitats attractive enough to entice voluntary fur- or feather-bearing tenants. " -David Case, Yale Alumni Magazine, March/April 2002

I remember one day in Africa it felt like I was communicating with trees. We didn't say anything (they're TREES!), but I was suddenly aware that I was surrounded by all of them, that they had been there, and now I had entered.

It was after the annual post-harvest burning of the fields, and the once green tangle of vines, leaves, thorns and grasses had been burnt to a two-inch stubble of black bristles, strewn with whispy white shreds that I kicked up into the air so they would back float down to cling to my sweaty legs with every step. As I crunched through the newly-barren landscape, covering more ground in an hour than I had achieved before in days, I stopped.

The blackened trunks of the still-surviving trees were all that broke the horizon line. In fact, even the horizon line itself was indistnguishable because of the soot and smoke still hanging in the air.

But I stopped.

And stood.

Still.

For a long time.

I was suddenly aware that I had entered the trees' space, that they had been through this over and over and now, here I was, standing with them. I felt like I could feel like them. I remember the feeling of quiet, the acceptance of the hot air, and that i didn't realise this until I had come out of it in a gentle rush. Like "so thats what it feels like to be a tree here. Thanks guys".

Yes, yes, flitty insupportable bollocks, I know. Enter Barbara Walters reference here. I don't really think I was "communicating" with trees, and I know it was all in my head, but I bring it up because I realise that for the Info Breath project I need to think about what it would be like if we could understand the info we passed to plants in our Co2. And vice versa.

I bring this up because I remembered, after searching through the roots for Info breath, that it is about love and communication, and because Natalie H.M. Jeremijenko has such a thoughtful approach to her interfaces with geese. She communicates with the geese on their own terms on the goose side of the interface, and makes the human accomodate the goose by creating an interface on the human side that involves mimicking the goose's movements. Form meets function in so many ways.

So, back to InfoBreath, we already communicate with the plant by breathing, and I am not trying to do a plant to plant communication, so I guess its the content I need to focus on. Same question, but I feel Jeremijenko's approach should shed some light.

Maybe I should go stand in the woods for a while.