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Posts Tagged ‘art’

Benefits of Human Plant Interfaces

May 18th, 2014 11 comments

Plant Colour Patterns

The beginning of the introduction mentioned the current ecological problems caused by humans. Some of these issues can be blamed directly on the inappropriate use of technology. The research on Human Plant Interfaces proposes interaction design solutions, which are more eco and human friendly. The exploration of these advantages is separated in the four parts design, urban development, production lifecycle, and social design.

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Books about Plants, Art and Environments

January 25th, 2014 3 comments

Plant Colour Patterns

During my research for my master thesis, I got some nice book recommendations about plants, nature, art and environment.

Natural artworks

These books provide a good overview how plants are used in Fine Arts over the last 100 years. Furthermore, it addresses and describes the environmental impacts of these design and art approaches. Pretty useful for an art history overview.

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Visualizing techniques with plants (old)

January 16th, 2014 No comments

Plant Colour Patterns

My old blog post about visualizing data with plants was a summary of related artworks. But for my master thesis, I had to apply a theoretical analysis method. The result is supposed to be a more (scientific) valuable evaluation of visualization techniques with plants. Here is the first version of it.

Nowadays information becomes more pervasive and crucial in a knowledge-based society [1]. Therefore it is important for a society to develop an easy access to communicate meaning and functionality of information [2]. The easiest information access exists in our natural everyday physical environment. Public Screens attempt to address this task. Unfortunately, current public screens hold several disadvantages for our public environment. They need a dedicated flat surface, illuminating their surrounded environments, and address only the visual sense. Furthermore, people often associate public screens with advertisement and pay less attention to them [2]. Therefore, it is rational to investigate information displays beyond the traditional screen-based visualizations. Plants are one of these objects, which are omnipresent in our daily physical environment. For this reason, data sculptures with plants might be an alternative approach to solve the problems of public screens and reach wide audiences. Read more...

Locomotion applied to Plants for Public Spaces (old)

December 26th, 2013 No comments

plant locomotion

The previous chapter "Can plants be music instruments" explored the possibilities of Biosensing with plants. Partially, it reveals some approaches how to translate plant perceptions into electronic signals (e.g. Pulsum Plantae). Movement and locomotion are always connected with perception [Ingensiep2001, p.303; Chamovitz2013, pp. 15] . The perception signal and the movement abilities of a living organism define how the movement will be performed. This interaction has an explosive power in philosophy. Read more...

Visualize data and stories with plants

November 21st, 2013 No comments

Plant Colour Patterns

On my last blog post "Can plants be a music interface" I explored plants as a possible input channel for musical devices. This time, I want to explore plants as a kind of display. Especially, how artists, designers, and engineers can communicate their data and stories through plants. More than a few plant based narrative approaches exist in our culture. They are mostly connected with old traditions and rituals. For instance, the Christmas tree or the Harvest festival (picture) are very common rituals for us. In this article I strongly focus on (Fine) Arts and Design approaches than on ritual driven expressions. The first part is more Fine Art and analog (without technology) oriented and the second part focuses on Design approaches with the support of Technology.

**** UPDATE NEW VERSION HERE ****

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Can Plants be a Music Instrument?

October 8th, 2013 6 comments

Make music with plants

During my research on Human Plant Interfaces I figured out music and sound is a very often used expression for this kind of interaction. As far as I know John Lifton and Richard Lowenberg are one of the first artists that used plants for creating a soundscape. Their installation "Green Music", created for the much discussed movie "The Secret Life of Plants" (movie), uses the approach of bio sensing and converts the signals to synthesized sounds. The visitors can interact with the plants via touch for changing the pitch level of a sound. Read more...

My most important Twitter Messages #16

July 1st, 2013 No comments

Twitter von der hess

A small summary of my Twitter messages from February 2013- June 2013:

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Links for plant-based Bio Art and Gardening

April 3rd, 2013 1 comment

Plant Colour Patterns

One week ago I published a blog post about links and places for Physical Computing in Germany. Today I decided to do the same for plant-based stuff. Hopefully, I get more organized in the future and maybe helpful for some others, too. Please feel free to add some others resources as comment. ThX!

DIY BIO (ART) Community

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Nature – Documents of Contemporary Art (Plants interfaces)

February 20th, 2013 No comments


During my research on Human Plant Interfaces I stumbled on the book "Nature" published by MIT Press and the Whitechapel Gallery. It is a collection of texts (essays, interviews, etc.) about the Contemporary Art history related to the topic Nature. This book is a nice inspiration source for every artist, scientist, developer who is dealing with nature. In my special case I was mainly interested into plants. You can read a short summary of my readings for my master thesis in Human Plant Interfaces: Read more...

Masterthesis: Human Plant Interfaces

February 15th, 2013 No comments

Masterthesis Starter

Since October I am working on my masterthesis about Human Plant Interfaces. I chose this topic because plants are not well researched in an interface design context. Plants are vital for our life but they are very rare in urban environments. In the context of my thesis I will research plants under the point of view of an interface designer. My objective is to find ways for integrating plants more in our daily life. The results of the research will be shared on my blog. I am happy about every feedback and open minded for discussions. At the university I showed a small presentation of my topic, it will give you an idea what I am planning to do.

*** UPDATE: Download the masterthesis here ***