Figure 1. Sommelier and Mignonneau, The Interactive Plant Growing, 1993.
In Katherine Hayles’s How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, she describes how information is disseminated through technology, and possibility of uploading human consciousness into a human like robot, machine form. Hayley suggests that humans will embrace a paradigm shift from a human to a posthuman, where consciousness and information can be held in various artificially produced bodies; led by a transition from embodiment (presence and absence of the body and its parts) to patterns and randomness of information. The film La Jette proposes a realization of these notions, where the protagonist travels through time and space, across dreamscapes filled with past, present and future narratives.
Artists Christa Sommelier and Laurent Mignonneau’s The interactive Plant Growing, is an engaging example of an artwork that embraces Hayles’s paradigm shift, juxtaposing interface, consciousness, between human and machine (see Fig 1). This piece is a generative blend between “vegetal and device-related systems” where the plant triggers an “image-generating impulse” to a computer (Sommelier and Mignonneau, Website). Moreover, this installation depicts a crossing of liminal space, between nature, science and technologies.
Figure 2. Constructa/vulva, 2001, 2011.
Whereas, the feminist art collective subRosa’s written manifesto politically challenges Hayles’s notions of information being accepted and transferred to other bodies (see Fig. 2). The collective works shed cultural awareness on matters such as the intersections between information, women’s bodies and biotechnologies (subRosa, Website).
Works Cited
Mitchell, WJ Thomas, and Mark BN Hansen, eds. Critical terms for media studies. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Shanken, Edward A. “Art and electronic media.” (2009).
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SINGING PLANT
Singing Plant was an installation consisting of a living plant wired up to a Theremin’s antenna. Participants could play music by touching or gesturing near the plant. The sensitivity field or “aura” extended several centimetres away from the plant. It was displayed in various settings such as a gallery and the Roskilde Festival. Participants quickly learned the interface by watching previous participants. They anthropomorphised the plant, ascribing feelings and aura to it. Participants also pushed limits and experimented by hitting the plant to make it react with sounds.
The interactive nature of the Singing Plant accentuates it as living and even communicating technology presenting the audience with an altered perspective or possibilities of the human/plant or subject/object relationship.
http://illutron.dk/The-Singing-Plant