Is Nature Natural?

Is Nature Natural?

Materials: succulent plants, Makey Makey
Tools: Arduino, Scratch, Premiere Pro
Work with Minjun Chen and Will Oberleitner
Time: 3 days

Inspiration
Our Relationships with Plants from Dawn to the Shared Future

Human behaviors towards plants are changing along the natural evolution. What will the human-plant relationship look like in the future? How are we going to treat plants? “Is Nature Natural?” explores the human-plant relationship in unexpected ways. By physically touching plants, we can hear different sound coming from them. This installation stimulates a discussion between human and plants, representing our manipulation from the dawn of symbiosis to our shared future.

Past
Plants as Food
to Human

Plants are producers in the natural food chain, being consumed by the human.

Now
Plants as Genetically Modified Nutrition

There are on-going experiments on producing the lab-grown meat to alleviate the food scarcity in the future. Turning plants into high protein foods won’t be far away in the biological sciences.

Future
Plants as
Artificial Intelligent Assistant

Decades later, people may make the plants part of Internet of Things or consumer electronics.

Behind the Scene
Design

The interaction achieved by the combination of Makey Makey and Scratch. I put recordings from cooking sound, animals, and Alexa voice assistant into Scratch as the sound output.

Makey Makey, a circuit board that can turn any organic material into the conductive material.
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Scratch, a visual programming language, and users can create online projects and make them into anything by coding with simple blocks.

Reflection
‍‍What I've learned

1. Prototyping helps think by exploring.

2. Learning through making.
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3. Considering about the technological feasibility and limitation within the design context.
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4. Think different. Solving problem with interdisciplinary knowledge.
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5. Never stop the exploration of new dimensions in interaction design.

The evolution of humankind is inevitable.
Could we still treat nature naturally?