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| groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-24 23:39] – [From plants to stories: patabotany] maja | groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-25 03:12] – alkan |
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| – J. Stephen Lansing | – J. Stephen Lansing |
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| In his essay “Plan/Plant/Planet,” Terrence McKenna proposed that plants could provide organisational principles for life in the 21st century. McKenna speculates about a society where humanity embraces the slowness and introspection of a vegetal culture, cyclical time, atmosphere-based economy, symbiotic and interdependent collaboration, and other qualities of the “vegetal mind.” Plants are able both to sustain themselves and replenish their surroundings – photosynthesizing, detoxifying their environment and recycling waste. They are resilient and adaptive, without sacrificing freshness, suppleness and grace that we tend to associate with fragility. Plants can inspire a“new paradigm capable of offering hope of a path out of the cultural quicksand” (McKenna 1992). | In his essay “Plan/Plant/Planet,” Terrence McKenna proposed that plants could provide organisational principles for life in the 21st century. McKenna speculates about a society where humanity embraces the slowness and introspection of a vegetal culture, cyclical time, atmosphere-based economy, symbiotic and interdependent collaboration, and other qualities of the “vegetal mind.” Plants are able both to sustain themselves and replenish their surroundings – photosynthesizing, detoxifying their environment and recycling waste. They are resilient and adaptive, without sacrificing the freshness, suppleness and grace that we tend to associate with fragility. Plants can inspire a “new paradigm capable of offering hope of a path out of the cultural quicksand” (McKenna 1992). |
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| ==== Borrowed scenery ==== | ==== Borrowed scenery ==== |
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| Human culture needs non-human nature to evolve. As Hakim Bey says: “The elimination of the non-human invokes the elimination of the human: culture can only be defined in relation to what it is not” (Bey 1996). The interplay between culture and nature is beautifully embodied in the concept of “borrowed scenery” in Chinese and Japanese gardening. Jiejing and shakkei gardens borrow their surroundings as elements of their design (Mehta and Tada, 2008). Mountains and rivers, sky and rocks are drawn into the garden and become a part of its narrative. Even though the plants cultivated in the garden and the untamed formations of faraway landscapes are topographically separated entities, they are experienced as part of one whole. The origins of jiejing lie in Buddhist temples, where gardens were designed as meditative spaces, with a hint of geomancy. Early Buddhist temple gardens in Japan used shakkei as teachings of humility and the interconnectedness of all beings in a layered reality. Several Buddhist meditation practices (such as mettā or tonglen) start with a focus on oneself which is gradually expanded, layer by layer, to include all sentient beings, the Earth and the whole universe. Similarly, a shakkei garden includes its human visitors and their gaze, drawing them from the cultivated foreground towards the focusing frame of the garden's edge, and finally into the background – the wild, uncontrolled, borrowed scenery. Over the centuries the spiritual connotations faded, and shakkei became a design technique used to give the garden a painterly depth and let its edges humbly diffuse in the surroundings. Borrowed scenery gardens can be seen as miniatures of a botanically-inspired culture, with plants and humans as interconnected layers of a planetary ecology. Rather than seeing them as separate entities, we shift perspective and treat cultures of plants and humans as a part of the same picture, where they complement and enrich each other. | Human culture needs non-human nature to evolve. As Hakim Bey says: “The elimination of the non-human invokes the elimination of the human: culture can only be defined in relation to what it is not” (Bey 1996). The interplay between culture and nature is beautifully embodied in the concept of “borrowed scenery” in Chinese and Japanese gardening. //Jiejing// and //shakkei// gardens borrow their surroundings as elements of their design (Mehta and Tada, 2008). Mountains and rivers, sky and rocks are drawn into the garden and become a part of its narrative. Even though the plants cultivated in the garden and the untamed formations of faraway landscapes are topographically separated entities, they are experienced as part of one whole. The origins of jiejing lie in Buddhist temples, where gardens were designed as meditative spaces, with a hint of geomancy. Early Buddhist temple gardens in Japan used shakkei as a way of teaching humility and the interconnectedness of all beings in a layered reality. Several Buddhist meditation practices (such as //mettā// or //tonglen//) start with a focus on oneself which is gradually expanded, layer by layer, to include the Earth, the whole universe, and all sentient beings. Similarly, a shakkei garden includes its human visitors and their gaze, drawing them from the cultivated foreground towards the focusing frame of the garden's edge, and finally into the background – the wild, uncontrolled, borrowed scenery. Over the centuries the spiritual connotations faded, and shakkei became a design technique used to give the garden a painterly depth and let its edges humbly diffuse in the surroundings. Borrowed scenery gardens can be seen as miniatures of a botanically-inspired culture, with plants and humans as interconnected layers of a planetary ecology. Rather than seeing them as separate entities, we shift perspective and treat cultures of plants and humans as a part of the same picture, where they complement and enrich each other. |
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| “For planting ground is painting a landscape with living things and I hold that good gardening takes rank with bounds of the fine arts, so I hold that to plant well needs an artist of no mean capacity.” | “For planting ground is painting a landscape with living things and I hold that good gardening takes rank with bounds of the fine arts, so I hold that to plant well needs an artist of no mean capacity.” |
| ==== Viriditas and Thalience ==== | ==== Viriditas and Thalience ==== |
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| The interconnectedness of the human and the vegetal has been a recurring, age-old theme in art, science and religion. Medieval healer and mystic Hildegard of Bingen wrote about plants radiating a greening life-force (Roth 2000), which she called viriditas. Any translation of viriditas into words and symbols would remain inadequate, but it is a phenomenon that can be viscerally experienced by most humans. Viriditas can be felt while walking through a lush forest, or picking leafy greens from a garden. It is the feeling of freshness and incomprehensible greenness, a quiet, elemental consciousness permeating all life. Sadly, the cultural values of our times seem to have strayed away from viriditas in favour of the active aspects of our animal attributes – speed, expansion, predation and consumption. The balance has tipped toward the bestial side of humanity at the expense of the vegetal. However, we can reacquaint ourselves with viriditas when we slow down, become still but acutely present, like a plant. We can witness viriditas in our own resilience, awareness, compassion and contemplation. | The interconnectedness of the human and the vegetal has been a recurring, age-old theme in art, science and religion. Medieval healer and mystic Hildegard of Bingen wrote about plants radiating a greening life-force (Roth 2000), which she called //viriditas.// Any translation of viriditas into words and symbols would remain inadequate, but it is a phenomenon that can be viscerally experienced by most humans. Viriditas can be felt while walking through a lush forest, or picking leafy greens from a garden. It is the feeling of freshness and incomprehensible greenness, a quiet, elemental consciousness permeating all life. Sadly, the cultural values of our times seem to have strayed away from viriditas in favour of the active aspects of our animal attributes – speed, expansion, predation and consumption. The balance has tipped toward the bestial side of humanity at the expense of the vegetal. However, we can reacquaint ourselves with viriditas when we slow down, become still but acutely present, like a plant. We can witness viriditas in our own resilience, awareness, compassion and contemplation. |
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| “Most noble | “Most noble |
| ==== From planetary to human scale: responsive environments ==== | ==== From planetary to human scale: responsive environments ==== |
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| groWorld sprouted from conversations between artists, engineers and activists at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada in 1999. In the heat of the scorched desert, under the shade of the looming millennium, our futures seemed riddled with insurmountable dilemmas. What should we carry over into the next century? Would we still be the guardians of our own skin, or would we fall under a portfolio of patents, together with rice and ancient medicinal plants? Will humans be around for the next ten thousand years? If we are, will we walk through fertile jungles, majestic forests and buzzing meadows, or will we live underground - below sterile deserts and toxic swamps? Could we escape to outer space? Will we reach the stars? All of these questions were about events on a planetary scale that spanned glacial time, that made us wonder how could any of our individual contributions make a difference? Who isn’t tired of being chastised for not doing enough for the environment, or apathetic when one doesn’t perceive any desired effects in one’s own lifetime? We were thirsty for a sense that our presence in the world matters and that the effects of our actions can be shared with others, as proposed in the theory of consilience (Wilson 1998) and the practice of urban gardening (Wilson 1999). | groWorld sprouted from conversations between artists, engineers and activists at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada in 1999. In the heat of the scorched desert, under the shade of the looming millennium, our futures seemed riddled with insurmountable dilemmas. What should we carry over into the next century? Would we still be the guardians of our own skin, or would we fall under a portfolio of patents, together with rice and ancient medicinal plants? Will humans still be around in next ten thousand years? Will we walk through fertile jungles, majestic forests and buzzing meadows, or will we live underground - below sterile deserts and toxic swamps? Could we escape to outer space? Will we reach the stars? All of these questions were about events on a planetary scale that spanned glacial time, that made us wonder how could any of our individual contributions make a difference? Who isn’t tired of being chastised for not doing enough for the environment, or apathetic when one doesn’t perceive any desired effects in one’s own lifetime? We were thirsty for a sense that our presence in the world matters and that the effects of our actions could be shared with others, as proposed in the theory of consilience (Wilson 1998) and the practice of urban gardening (Wilson 1999). |
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| It was time for us to bring conversations down to the human scale and offer participants a direct experience of the effects we can have on our immediate surroundings (in real time and in a circumscribed space). FoAM designed a forest of phantasmagoric robo-botanical trees that surrounded a responsive domed shelter – the “growth bunker.” In the warmth of the bunker, visitors were immersed in electro-luminescent light and generative sound, an environment designed to respond to people’s voices and movement. Within this space, the environmental effects of their conscious and unconscious actions became instantly apparent. As in Wim Wenders’ movie Until the End of the World, people became intoxicated by the experience of their actions rippling through the growth and decay of biomorphic light and soundscapes. The interplay between people’s actions and environmental responses encouraged deceleration and engagement. The expected instant gratification of digital entertainment was substituted with meditative explorations of ambient changes. | It was time for us to bring conversations down to the human scale and offer participants a direct experience of the effects we can have on our immediate surroundings (in real time and in a circumscribed space). FoAM designed a forest of phantasmagoric robo-botanical trees that surrounded a responsive domed shelter – the “growth bunker.” In the warmth of the bunker, visitors were immersed in electro-luminescent light and generative sound, an environment designed to respond to people’s voices and movement. Within this space, the environmental effects of their conscious and unconscious actions became instantly apparent. As in Wim Wenders’ movie Until the End of the World, people became intoxicated by the experience of their actions rippling through the growth and decay of biomorphic light and soundscapes. The interplay between people’s actions and environmental responses encouraged deceleration and engagement. The expected instant gratification of digital entertainment was substituted with meditative explorations of ambient changes. |
| ==== From human to vegetal scale: plant games ==== | ==== From human to vegetal scale: plant games ==== |
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| After seeing the effects of "human scale interaction", groWorld collaborators were encouraged to deepen their investigations into human-computer-plant interactions (HCPI). HCPI allows people to perceive the environmental effects of their actions in real-time, using their naked senses rather than waiting for decades when it is often too late do do something about it. After a winding path through gardens and forests, the investigation led to experiments with computer games. Games in which humans could play a plant. The challenge here was to move away from instrumentalising plants to empathising with them – experiencing the sensations of “being” a plant, rather than “doing” things to plants, as gardeners or designers. As there are no definitive translation mechanisms (yet) to ask a tree or a herb what being a plant really means, the game designers relied on their own observations and imagination. Being a plant meant reaching a state of mind where stillness, slowness and beauty provided energy and incentive to playfully explore, give up control, grow and decay, create and destroy, perhaps even experience viriditas through human fingertips. Games could become a way for humans to exercise their forgotten vegetal reflexes and experience the delight of patience, growth, diffusion, ambient perception, chemical communication, and a continuous quest for light and moisture. | After seeing the effects of human scale interaction in responsive environments, groWorld collaborators broadened their investigations into human-computer-plant interactions (HCPI). HCPI allows people to perceive the environmental effects of their actions in human time scales, using their naked senses rather than having to wait years or decades when it may be too late to respond. After a winding path through gardens and forests, the investigation led to experiments with computer games. Games in which humans could play a plant. The challenge here was to move away from instrumentalising plants to empathising with them – experiencing the sensations of “being” a plant, rather than “doing” things to plants, as gardeners or designers. As there are no definitive translation mechanisms (yet) to ask a tree or a herb what being a plant really means, the game designers relied on their own observations and imagination. Being a plant meant reaching a state of mind where stillness, slowness and beauty provided energy and incentive to playfully explore, give up control, grow and decay, create and destroy, perhaps even experience viriditas through human fingertips. Games could become a way for humans to exercise their forgotten vegetal reflexes and experience the delight of patience, growth, diffusion, ambient perception, chemical communication, and a continuous quest for light and moisture. |
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| Making the inward-oriented plant life compelling in the context of computer games is challenging. FoAM collaborated with game designers Tale of Tales to explore what it means to play a plant on a computer screen. To investigate whether there could be consilience between game design, botany and permaculture, the team prototyped a series of mini-games. One approach involved connecting physical plants to sensors so that information about their physical environment would influence the “weather” in a digital garden. In another prototype, plant collaboration (as understood in permaculture) was used as a starting point for developing game mechanics. | Making the inward-oriented beauty of plant life compelling in the context of computer games is challenging. FoAM collaborated with game designers Tale of Tales to explore what it means to play a plant on a computer screen. To investigate whether there could be consilience between game design, botany and permaculture, the team prototyped a series of mini-games. One approach involved connecting physical plants to sensors so that information about their physical environment would influence the “weather” in a digital garden. In another prototype, plant collaboration (as understood in permaculture) was used as a starting point for developing game mechanics. |
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| Having experimented with the “first-plant perspective” in a range of prototypes, attention shifted back to “playing with plants,” this time in the collaborative spaces of online social networks. Germination X is groWorld's attempt to introduce plants as guides in creating self-sustaining digital gardens, as a response to the industrial farming game Farmville. FoAM designed a prototype in which players are guided by autonomous “plant spirits” to design virtual permaculture guilds, where diverse plants work together to grow and propagate. Building on Germination X, FoAM created Zizim, a hybrid between a mobile app and an online game, exploring the interaction between urban foraging and symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi. | Having experimented with the “first-plant perspective” in a collection of prototypes, attention shifted back to “playing with plants,” this time in the collaborative spaces of online social networks. Germination X is an attempt to introduce plants as guides in creating self-sustaining digital gardens, as a response to the industrial farming game Farmville. FoAM designed a prototype in which players are guided by autonomous “plant spirits” to grow virtual permaculture guilds, where diverse plants work together to grow and propagate. Zizim started to grow out of Germination X, by reconnecting it to the physical city. Zizim (compass in Hildegard's Lingua Ignota) emerged as a hybrid between a mobile app and an online game, exploring the interaction between urban foraging and the symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi. |
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| All of the groWorld mini-games play with human interpretations of plant sentience. Until we are able to convince a plant to design a game about its own life, the number of possible viewpoints, backstories and gameplay is limited only by our imagination. | All of the groWorld prototype games play with human interpretations of plant sentience. Until we are able to convince a plant to help design a game about its own life, the number of possible viewpoints, backstories and gameplay is limited to our imagination. |
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| “I effuse my flesh in eddies | “I effuse my flesh in eddies |
| * Wright, J. A “Blessing.” Retrieved on 10 November 2007 from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-blessing/ | * Wright, J. A “Blessing.” Retrieved on 10 November 2007 from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-blessing/ |
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| === groWorld's allies === | === groWorld's kindred people and places === |
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| * Borrowed Scenery: http://borrowed-scenery.net | * Borrowed Scenery: http://borrowed-scenery.net |
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