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| groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-24 23:39] – [From plants to stories: patabotany] maja | groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-25 03:35] – 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 |
| While viriditas can be an experiential and spiritual muse of a vegetal human culture, for the analytically inclined a more empirical approach to the idea of vegetal sentience is needed (aside from the well-known psychedelic and shamanistic perspectives). Justifiably, before encouraging development of a vegetal mind in humans, we’d like to understand the plant’s point of view first, rather than modelling our human existence on an incomplete interpretation. We might want to engage with the botanical kingdom directly, and grasp how plants perceive and communicate. There are several examples from both mainstream and fringe science looking at plant perception, signalling and sentience. Daniel Chamovitz recently wrote about how plants experience and respond to the world (Chamovitz 2012). Plant neurobiology developed in the last decade as a scientific discipline researching plants' signalling and adaptive behaviour (Barlow 2008). On the edges of scientific replicability, we find Clive Backster's biocommunication experiments with a specimen of Dracena Massengeana connected to a polygraph (Backster 2003), or the imaginative crescographs by Jagdish Chandra Bose and Randall Fontes (Theroux 1997). These experiments look at plant growth and movement in response to external stimuli, and attempt to understand plant perception and communication. | While viriditas can be an experiential and spiritual muse of a vegetal human culture, for the analytically inclined a more empirical approach to the idea of vegetal sentience is needed (aside from the well-known psychedelic and shamanistic perspectives). Justifiably, before encouraging development of a vegetal mind in humans, we’d like to understand the plant’s point of view first, rather than modelling our human existence on an incomplete interpretation. We might want to engage with the botanical kingdom directly, and grasp how plants perceive and communicate. There are several examples from both mainstream and fringe science looking at plant perception, signalling and sentience. Daniel Chamovitz recently wrote about how plants experience and respond to the world (Chamovitz 2012). Plant neurobiology developed in the last decade as a scientific discipline researching plants' signalling and adaptive behaviour (Barlow 2008). On the edges of scientific replicability, we find Clive Backster's biocommunication experiments with a specimen of Dracena Massengeana connected to a polygraph (Backster 2003), or the imaginative crescographs by Jagdish Chandra Bose and Randall Fontes (Theroux 1997). These experiments look at plant growth and movement in response to external stimuli, and attempt to understand plant perception and communication. |
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| Venturing to communicate with plants would require humans to grasp the logic of the “vegetal mind.” Plant consciousness would no doubt be considered alien and impossible to perceive without assistance. This is where knowledge of human-computer interaction might be informative. The field of computer science has developed a variety of methods to determine the nature of machine mind by comparing it to the human mind (the Turing test being the best known example). However, it is quite anthropocentrically arrogant to think that human sentience, perception and behaviour is the only possible expression of consciousness. Why measure sentience by how well it mirrors that of humans? Nature may contain a myriad of disparate sentiences, operating according to their own internally consistent, externally incomprehensible logic. We might be "hearing their voices" daily, but having no sensory and mental capacity to translate and interpret their meaning. Perhaps we should focus our energies on “an attempt to give the physical world itself a voice so that rather than us asking what reality is, reality itself can tell you” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Writer Karl Schroeder called this "post-scientific" communication with non-human sentient beings "Thalience". A plant-inspired culture could benefit from getting to know our verdant neighbours from a range of perspectives, including direct and unmediated experience, moving away from teleological, utilitarian and reductionist analyses of human relationships with plants. Schroeder talks about “non-human intelligences who come to different conclusions about what the universe [is] like” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Plants are such “non-human intelligences” with whom we share the same universe, yet the way in which they experience the world remains beyond our grasp. | Venturing to communicate with plants would require humans to grasp the logic of the “vegetal mind.” Plant consciousness would no doubt be considered alien and impossible to perceive without assistance. This is where knowledge of human-computer interaction might be informative. The field of computer science has developed a variety of methods to determine the nature of machine mind by comparing it to the human mind (the Turing test being the best known example). However, it is quite anthropocentrically arrogant to think that human sentience, perception and behaviour is the only possible expression of consciousness. Why measure sentience by how well it mirrors that of humans? Nature may contain a myriad of disparate sentiences, operating according to their own internally consistent, externally incomprehensible logic. We might be "hearing their voices" daily, but having no sensory and mental capacity to translate and interpret their meaning. Perhaps we should focus our energies on “an attempt to give the physical world itself a voice so that rather than us asking what reality is, reality itself can tell you” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Writer Karl Schroeder called this "post-scientific" communication with non-human sentient beings "thalience." A plant-inspired culture could benefit from getting to know its verdant neighbours from a range of perspectives, including direct and unmediated experience, moving away from teleological, utilitarian and reductionist analyses of human relationships with plants. Schroeder talks about “non-human intelligences who come to different conclusions about what the universe [is] like” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Plants are such “non-human intelligences” with whom we share the same universe, yet the way in which they experience the world remains beyond our grasp. |
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| “We have nothing in common with the Geometers. No shared experiences, no common culture. Until that changes, we can't communicate with them. Why not? Because language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that are perfectly meaningless until we associate them, in our minds, with meaning; a process of acculturation. Until we share experiences with the Geometers, and thereby begin to develop a shared culture – in effect, to merge our culture with theirs – we cannot communicate with them, and their efforts to communicate with us will continue to be just as incomprehensible as the gestures they've made so far.” | “We have nothing in common with the Geometers. No shared experiences, no common culture. Until that changes, we can't communicate with them. Why not? Because language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that are perfectly meaningless until we associate them, in our minds, with meaning; a process of acculturation. Until we share experiences with the Geometers, and thereby begin to develop a shared culture – in effect, to merge our culture with theirs – we cannot communicate with them, and their efforts to communicate with us will continue to be just as incomprehensible as the gestures they've made so far.” |
| ==== groWorld sym-bio-sys ==== | ==== groWorld sym-bio-sys ==== |
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| At the intersections of culture, gardening and technology we can start to see how plants can become organisational principles for human society in the turbulent times of the 21st century. Although we may need to scavenge at the fringes of contemporary society, we can observe many healing effects that humans can have on their surroundings through a symbiotic collaboration with plants. Some fight desertification and remediate industrial wastelands through natural farming and permaculture. Others design whole lifecycle, closed-loop technological and architectural systems inspired by natural processes, based on the art and science of biomimicry. Yet, these are scattered examples. We still don’t have widespread methods to improve wasteful, often counter-productive human behaviours. How do we encourage broader, longer term cultural changes? What varieties of culture would be capable of forging symbiotic relationships between postindustrial human societies and the rest of the earth? How do we compost bitterness to grow beauty? | At the intersections of culture, gardening and technology we can start to see how plants can become organisational principles for human society in the turbulent times of the 21st century. Although we may need to scavenge at the fringes of contemporary society, we can observe many healing effects that humans can have on their surroundings through a symbiotic collaboration with plants. Some fight desertification and remediate industrial wastelands through natural farming and permaculture. Others design whole lifecycle, closed-loop technological and architectural systems inspired by natural processes, based on the art and science of biomimicry. Yet, these are scattered examples. We still don’t have widespread methods to improve wasteful, often counter-productive human behaviours. How do we encourage broader, longer-term cultural changes? What varieties of culture would be capable of forging symbiotic relationships between postindustrial human societies and the rest of the earth? How do we compost bitterness to grow beauty? |
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| From these questions and assertions sprouted the groWorld initiative, a long-term inquiry into human-plant interactions and their effect on the longevity of human culture. The people of FoAM - a distributed laboratory for speculative culture - initiated groWorld to "minimise borders and maximise edges" between the man-made and the vegetal. In these zones of liminality and ambiguity, groWorld abets "unholy alliances" between contemporary culture and cultivation, building and growing, botany and technology. Inspired by the way in which plant species propagate – spanning multiple temporal layers – the initiative encompasses both long- and short-term explorations. The slow processes of cultural adaptation and plant cultivation are researched across several decades, through observation and interaction. At the same time, quick technological and social changes are incorporated through techno-artistic experiments in three interconnected branches: {sym}, {bio} and {sys}. The {sym} branch looks at how human culture can be infused with vegetal characteristics: in botanical fiction, plant games, active materials, and responsive environments. The {bio} branch is about a direct collaboration with plants, using age-old techniques of foraging and gardening, seeing cities as edible landscapes for humans and non-humans. Finally, {sys} deals with botanically-inspired technologies that can help humans engage with plants beyond the physical level, through sensing, perception and perhaps even communication. | From these questions and assertions sprouted the groWorld initiative, a long-term inquiry into human-plant interactions and their effect on the longevity of human culture. The people of FoAM – a distributed laboratory for speculative culture – initiated groWorld to "minimise borders and maximise edges" between the man-made and the vegetal. In these zones of liminality and ambiguity, groWorld abets "unholy alliances" between contemporary culture and cultivation, building and growing, botany and technology. Inspired by the way in which plant species propagate – spanning multiple temporal layers – the initiative encompasses both long- and short-term explorations. The slow processes of cultural adaptation and plant cultivation are researched across several decades, through observation and interaction. At the same time, quick technological and social changes are incorporated through techno-artistic experiments in three interconnected branches: {sym}, {bio} and {sys}. The {sym} branch looks at how human culture can be infused with vegetal characteristics: in botanical fiction, plant games, active materials, and responsive environments. The {bio} branch is about a direct collaboration with plants, using age-old techniques of foraging and gardening and seeing cities as edible landscapes for humans and non-humans. Finally, {sys} deals with botanically-inspired technologies that can help humans engage with plants beyond the physical level, through sensing, perception and perhaps even communication. |
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| Through a cross-fertilisation of {sym}{bio}{sys}, groWorld merges digital culture with environmentalism. Both approaches promote empowerment of trans-local communities and are rooted in self-reliant maker-cultures, yet they don’t often mingle. groWorld encourages their interaction by bringing programmers and gardeners, gamers and botanists together on the common ground of the arts. Together, they create hybrids of gardening and technology, or narrative realities where human and vegetal can merge into a unified, hybrid culture. | Through a cross-fertilisation of {sym}{bio}{sys}, groWorld merges digital culture with environmentalism. Both approaches promote empowerment of trans-local communities and are rooted in self-reliant maker-cultures, yet they don’t often mingle. groWorld encourages their interaction by bringing programmers and gardeners, gamers and botanists together on the common ground of the arts. Together, they create hybrids of gardening and technology, or narrative realities where human and vegetal can merge into a unified, hybrid culture. |
| ==== 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. |
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| ==== 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 on a human time scale, 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 was one outgrowth of Germination X that focused on reconnecting the game world to physical locales. 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 gameplays are limited only by the 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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