Lots of news in the plant department. First off, I completed a rough but fully functional InfoBreath for the Graduate Student Open House this week. I skewered a beautiful iris with a piezo sensor, slipped the now cybernetic flower through my custom cut and sandblasted glass, hooked it up to my basic stamp mounted on podium, and projected network traffic onto the glass when people breathed on the flower.

Photos here, as well as the new website for the project.

It was amazing how animal-like the flower reacted when I skewered it. When I purchased the iris it was tight and closed, but after I pierced its bulb with the wires, snaked them down its stem, and then ripped it out like entrails or guineau worm, its "mouth" opened up within minutes as in a last gasp. It even dropped a poetic last petal onto the glass in a gesture of submission.

When I was in the supermarket today I noticed some Cala Lillies, and they gave me and idea for a less destructive approach.

Cala Lillies have a cup and fat stamen that would hold a sensor beautifully, plus they are potted rather than cut flowers, so I could nurture one particular plant rather than killing new ones for each installation. I'd like to plant some Cala Lily bulbs myself, and weave the wires into it as it grows, so that the sensor and wires are truly integrated into the plant, rather than forced down its throught in a fatal act of electronic submission.

I got some good responses (one dutch girl said "this is the coolest fucking thing!", and the people from Kansas came back twice to show others!), although some people didn't see the point and clearly thoiught I was a mad scientist who should be spending his skills on something more fruitful. One person responded well before I told her the concept, which made me happy, because it is important to me that my stuff work on the experiential level without the viewer being aware of the concept, as well as conceptually.

Lessons learned from Open Studio

Nobody knew to blow on the flower (as expected- I mean, who blows on a flower?). Next time, have a spot-light shining on the short blurb ("breathing on the plant triggers a flurry of text..."). and perhaps integrate an item that people already know to blow on, like a pinwheel or bubble-blowing thingy.

Speaking of which, that woman blowing bubbles is in the army, and this is her Army Site:

"This is some stupid picture of a tank. That's me, blowing up Iraq."

Anyway, I'll also have to modify the way the sensor is integrated, because located at the stamen, the plant itself absorbs most of the force from blowing. The sensor works when it flexes, and attached to a stiff base the slighest breath can flex it. However, linked to a flexible stem, the plant itself flexes much more than the sensor, so the text trigger was frustratingly buggy.

Of course, better placement for sensing (at the base of the stem perhaps) would destroy the whole sensor-as-stamen aesthetic, but Chris Mendoza made me realise that nobody associates the sensor with anything "cyber" or electronic anyway, so better off using wires and circuits and such in the face of the flower as a cybernetic-decoy, while palcing the actual sensors somewhere they actually function!

Alot of people expected sound, but I try to avoid gratuitous media, so I don't want to integrate sound unless it has something to do with the process, and as plants don't make any sounds, I'm out of luck, right?

Wrong! Gleefully, excitedly wrong, wrong wrong!

It turns out, not only do they make sounds, but they also move! Here is a time-lapse film from Roger P. Hangarter of a morning glory vine spinning as it looks for a pole to clim- a nastic twining movement for those who like terms.

Plants also go through daily circadian movements, like this bean plants' sleep-wake cycle.

Apparently plants also feel stress, and respond to positive and negative reinforcement:

I don't still have it but a couple of us produced a record (recorded down in Nashville) called the Stereofernic Orchidstra. It was plants, hooked up by electrodes to several ARP synthesizers. We'd then threaten the plants with lighters, exactos, reward them with water and take huge bits out of apples and lettuce sandwiches.

We sold some of the cuts to the movie "Secret Life of Plants."

Who could have figured but we actually made a couple bucks . . . and got great press for the soundstudio for which we worked (or some owned). We even made Cronkite.
-Chris Sayer

But do they feel pain? Islam isn't sure.

Anyway, now I have plenty of fodder for plant-sounds to get triggered like the text, and perhaps I can do what these people are doing and hook the plant up directly to a sound-making device, so the people trigger sound as well as text, and not just froma sensor, but from the plants' actual changes in leaf potentials when touched or breathed on.