Organic Cinema Workshop. Plants and Technology

Organic Cinema is an interdisciplinary research platform, inspired and informed by scientific research on intelligence of plants and cutting edge development in the latest sensory technologies aiming to encourage public to have a deeper look at their immediate natural environment (and beyond) – even that invisible one. It is initiated by World Wilder Lab – an art collective set up by three artists Ivan Henriques, Erik Overmeire and Kasia Molga who share the same passion for environment, nature, living organisms, technology, data and science as our main inspiration to make art in order to tell a story about the hidden beauty of this world.

Action & variation potentials - or the source of data - is extremely important in the creation of the visual output. As the signals of action & variation potentials come from inside a plant they truly shows reaction of plants to various stimuli from the environment, allowing us to have a better understanding of plants’ behaviour.  We not only want to read those signals and convey their meaning to a wider audience, but see whether we can learn something valuable about the environment in which those plants exist.

Challenges

Our main challenge is to produce an arduino shield which we can connect to electrodes. We are looking for solution to be able to amplify the tiny voltages of the action and variation potentials and output those on a scale suited for the arduino. We also need to find which type of electrodes will be the best for a purpose Organic Cinema so that the signal coming from the electrodes can be easily and effectively filtered.

Participants:

Ideally we would like to work with people who have some knowledge and interest in electronics and plants (or electrophysiology of plants).

Desirable skills: arduino, electronics, environmental data acquisition, soldering, arduino shield design, rapid prototyping, hackers, people who can think outside of the box.

This project is funded by the European Project Connecting Cities Network.