hello plant.
Growing CoDesign (GCD) was an explorative research project that invited plants to become co-designers in creative practices through the use of novel sensing technology; a journey of exploring the creative potentials of plants. You can read more about the project and the people behind it here.
In the project, we designed the Plant Radio, a device with which plants could participate in conversations. Here is the academic research paper about the design of the radio: “Plant Radio: Tuning in to plants by combining posthumanism and design” (if you want to read it but don’t have access, email us). And see more about the object here.
We also hosted free workshops for the public to participate in being creative with plants. You can find photos from the events here.
our mission.
Environmental issues are of pressing concern in public and political discussions and play an increasingly central role in design practice. Despite this, we know little about how to actually include the environment into design processes.
With this project we wanted to explore how we might develop methods to design with the environment in practice, and how we might develop methods to include plants in design processes in a ‘more-than-human’ world.
We focused on plants as potential creative partners. To do so in practice we used, a) a range of sensing technologies that allows for reading and interpreting basic plant-signals — that is we were able to establish a rudimentary form of communication with the plants. And, b) a variety of creative practices applied as a way to express and materialize the interaction that unfolds between specific plants and people when they enter into a creative partnership.
In the research section you can read more about the technology, the corresponding plant science, the theoretical background of the project and related work and research.
There is also a link to the project publications, including two videos.