testing motion

so, trying to find a way to make the plants move led us to putting a motor against the trunk and branches of one ...

it's pretty sweet having some technical gurus fussing over my sculptural ideas, instead of it being me fiddling about in the studio by myself.

the motor was a bit noisy and not really generating any appropriate motion, just very low level vibration.

so we tried an actuator and that was pretty good. it created a better twitching motion that looked quite organic, like muscle twitches. but it was a bit clicky and a basically just pokes the plant. so we've got to resolve that with some adaptations, but it's promising for sure.

one of the limitations though, with the actuators, is that they are quite expensive. the one we were using with testing is about $80 and if i was to have a garden of say 20 plants ... that's pretty pricy. we'll keep working through the options, including memory wire (which isn't due in until wednesday).

buying in a population

hurray - equipment run to bunnings!

double hurray - medialab get it for me!

oh, and here it is worth noting the joy that is coming with working in a group of artists, whose works are also coming along in their own way. some chances for us to cross-pollinate our works and learn off each other, help each other, and just be motivated by the activity.

antoinette kindly sourced some materials from her supplies and has lent me a flex sensor, a pir sensor and some other bits that i can throw into the mix of my project. brilliant.

so here's the plants, 3 japanese aralia or nellie kelly plants....

rippling system of plant dancers

this would work especially well with a big group of plants, like a crowd of them together. but for the prototype, getting a small network, in this case 3 plants, provides the foundational basis to test it out.

* gotta decide what dictates the starting point to begin the action.

* gotta decide what patterns are set in motion, ie: do the plants move out in rippled motion, do they go out in linear lines (for example, around a circle)? how long do they continue to react? do we let them settle back down to a resting point?

interestingly, this picks up one of the ideas set out in an earlier drawings from yesterday:

unfortunately, it kinda means much of yesterday's work on building capacitive and humidity sensors is not going to be necessary going forward. but - on the plus side for me - now i have that experience for future projects!

reset redirect refocus

so today we looked through where we were going and we had some refining ideas...

the biggest issue has always been the power of the human - and the fact that the human presence tends to drive the action, making them the main agent, putting plants into the position of the object being acted upon.

so - big change - humans as actants in the system have been removed.

now the focus is on created a network of plants, all acting together (still in motion), but only by their own behaviours. so regardless of human presence, they still function and do things. sure, humans entering the system could then influence that behaviour, but importantly, they don't begin it, or dictate it.

so to get going we have to make a mini-system of 3 plants, build mechanisms that will make them move, build sensors so they can detect each other's motion, and find a way to make them all behave in relation to each other.

running the numbers

so this is the data feed from the plant - showing the code for the arduino (that's the processor unit that runs like a mini-computer).

next step, make it portable by running on battery, and enabling it to send the data via wifi so that it doesn't need to be connected to my laptop. the data should be able to feed directly on to the internet and be visible anywhere!

probing the possibilities

just built a humidity sensor, that detects the levels of conductivity in the soil (higher for wetter, lower for dryer) and created the code to monitor the data coming back into the computer. also tested connecting it to a voltage reader so you can see the fluctuations on a more traditional meter, a more tangible and direct feedback option.

already, just in a day, i've moved my practice from the illusion of monitored plants - to actually monitored plants. this is pretty exciting. the potential now is to take the raw data that's coming into the computer from the plant, and turn that into something - action, sound, vision.  and also, to hook up multiple plants to read them collectively and combine multiple feeds together.

jumping ahead

with all this technical know-how in the room, and with other artists powering away on great ideas it's hard to keep the reigns on the imagination.

while tim and jesse go off to hunt us down some tools and equipment from the electronic stores, i'm sketching away on the potential outcomes of the project in the longer term. really, this is just to set out a horizon line to work toward, and then paring back the elements that are not feasible in our timeframe, refining the project outcomes for this week.

plan(t)s in motion

getting started with some plans for a project that we can build and have completed in a week. we've talked about refining the broad claims of my initial project to enable an outcome capable of being realised.

sunday morning, where we're at:
using sonic conversion is great, and has potential, but is being done fairly regularly at the moment.
talking of finding different expressive modes, leads to the idea of motion.
motion invests an agency in the plants -  one key difference between the animal and plant kingdom, is the plants' lack of mobility. investing them with the capability to move is more novel and being more literally 'active' could be a good way to play on agency.

this is an initial sketch of the first idea - to have plants twitch in response to behaviour/condition.
thinking here that a human actor in the scene can be detected by one plant, and it's the other plants that respond to the touch (need to consider of it is all, if the reaction dissipates across distance).
also, if one plant is too dry, too wet, or suffers some other problem, the plants around it begin to respond (twitch).

again here, i'm trying to ensure the human isn't too much in the driver's seat, and the plants appear as if they have their own power and behaviour, regardless of human intervention.

possible future directions:
i like here how the distances could be played with - could be a tree in a forest whose condition triggers reaction in a pot plant in the city. or your garden veggie patch that affects your pot plants etc.
also the dissipating reactions across space - rippling out from the central point.
and later on, these twitch reactions could be coupled with other effects such as sound and could be transmitted not only to the plants but beyond them to other devices or through other media.

lab rat

DAY 1

started medialab today - and it's excellent.

the general gist:
 - propose a project
 - if they like it, they pick you
 - they call in as many experts as they can, to help you realise the project

pretty sweet.

so my project is to hook up sensors to a garden/forest and convert the data to sounds or a lighting display or some sort of swirling graphics video. that's the basic version anyway.

today we built some sensors, chatted about the directions of the projects (there's 3 running in this workshop), and considered how we could make them work, what possible variations we could explore.

there's 10 days of this, the last day is the exhibition of the works, and we've already got off to a flying start. can't wait to see what we develop over the course of the program.

oh - and the guys that run this thing are great. just great.