EXP 1

CAPACITIVE SENSING

Experiencing human-plant touch based interactions through Capacitive Sensing.

→ Using capacativeSense to create a touch-activated sensor. Connected to an electrode in the plant soil.

→ Establishing a serial connection with p5.

→ Serial connection with p5. Touching the plant leaves produces digital leaves.

→ A more systematic form of visualisation.

CONCLUSION

→ While interactions with the plant are confined touch-based gestures, it holds a lot of potential and is an interesting tactile experience.

→ These resistor-based capacitive sensors include a lot of external noise.

EXP 2

TOUCH ME NOTS

Studying and growing Mimosa Pudica plants for their thigmonastic (touch-induced movement) properties.

→ Digging up a Mimosa pudica plant from the field in front of LASALLE, very thorny!

→ Almost killed the plant in the uprooting process.

→ Cut off the dead branches, resulting in new growth!

NEXT STEPS

GIVE THE MIMOSA PUDICA PLANT SOME TIME TO RECOVER, HAHA

EXP 3

BANANA LEAVES

Culturally contextualising explorations and creating interfaces through identified culturally-specific objects of nature.

→ Responses to 'describe an interaction you’ve had involving nature that is communion your culture.'

→ While it seemed obvious in hindsight, the reoccurrence of leaves in almost every answer was notable. Leaves are extremely diverse in form and function.

→ Through the deliberate placement of copper wire, the banana leaves allowed for some difference in signal based on where the reading was taken.

→ Playing around with decay. Readings taken from extremely wilted areas were less in magnitude when compared to fresher areas.

→ Overview of setup. Stickers were used to indicate reading magnitude.

→ The process of taking a reading.

CONCLUSION

The proximity-based banana leaf experiment opens up avenues for slider-based interactions, and the wilting banana leaf proved that decaying organic matter can also be used to facilitate interactions.

EXP 4

GOING OUTSIDE

Taking the concept of human-plant interaction and applying it in an outdoor environment context through an excursion.

→ Testing a version of the capacitive sensing set-up with a cactus and displaying readings through an LED matrix.

→ Mounting onto a portable rack and adding a large copper-plate PCB to act as an electrode for any soil.

→ Attempting to get discernable readings, but all the sensor could detect was noise.

CONCLUSION

This set-up with the current capacity and power supply is not enough to sense tactile interactions in such a large area. Maybe it's worth revisiting with more suitable tech.

EXP 5

LEAF LITTER

Investigating the use of decaying leaf litter as a potential interface.

→ Capacitive sensing experiment on discarded and decaying leaves with various forms, sizes and dimensions.

→ Applying stickers based on how strong the numerical signal generated from touch at that point is.

CONCLUSION

Decaying matter is conductive! However, once leaves are dead they turn into more static entities and simply hold organic material properties, but not life. Is the concept of Living Media Interfaces with dead leaves still applicable?

EXP 6

PLANT MOVEMENT

According to Micheal Wilberg's definitions of the dynamics of interaction, careful consideration of 'change of state' and 'speed of change' help establish a successful interaction.

This experiment looks into producing immediate physical responses by the plant when touched.

→ Diagram for producing a 'contracting' and 'expanding' leaf with the help of servo motors.

→ Basic wire-built experimentation.

→ Applying the above mechanism to the plant via attached strings.

CONCLUSION

Morally, the interaction feels wrong. It is quite aggressive and jarring, and even though it may not actually harm the plant, it makes for a negative experience on both ends.

EXP 7

PLANT THEREMIN

According to Micheal Wilberg's definitions of the dynamics of interaction, careful consideration of 'change of state' and 'speed of change' help establish a successful interaction.

This experiment looks into producing immediate audio-based responses from the plant when touch, using p5's Oscillator library.

→ A non-grounded, noiser version, results are harder to distinguish.

→ A grounded version. The pitch always returns to the same higher level when touched.

CONCLUSION

Using audio as a response allows you to truly focus on the visual and tangible interaction with the plant. This opens up avenues for further plant-driven musical experimentation, and perhaps more variety in terms of sound and selectivity in terms of narrative can be considered.

EXP 8

CELLULAR AUTOMATA

According to Micheal Wilberg's definitions of the dynamics of interaction, careful consideration of 'change of state' and 'speed of change' help establish a successful interaction.

This experiment looks into producing immediate visual responses through the use of cellular automata patterns projected onto it.

→ Building a responsive cellular automata pattern in p5.js. The numerical input received from the plant serves as the base value for this generated visual.

→ Projecting a pattern onto the plant. It is visually a little chaotic due to pre-existing patterns on the leaf patina.

→ The cellular automatic details get lost.

CONCLUSION

The light projection-mapping cellular automata system does not work because the light is unidirectional and casts shadows when the participant’s hands get in the way. Furthermore, it also works in only a dark setting, so it is automatically invalid and inactive for a majority of the time! Still, it proved to be a fascinating midnight experience.

EXP 9

EMBODIED PLANT INTERACTION.

Till now, focus has remained on the augmentation of the plant. This intervention focuses on wearable garments and embodied interactions, where the user can easily interact with any botanical object of nature in their surroundings.

→ A starter 'glove' equipped with LED lights that change intensity depending on capacitive input received.

CONCLUSION

Was not a successful experiment and was extremely rough. Furthermore, confuses the human body's natural capacitance as a signal, thereby producing incorrect readings.

EXP 10

COLLABORATION BETWEEN HUMAN, PLANT AND MACHINE.

Creating real time illustrations in tandem with human-plant interaction.

→ The setup. The plant connected to Arduino to laptop, which directs the interactions on the Axidraw.

→ The visual language is quick and consists of ellipses, a callback to the shape of the leaf.

→ The plant in this case is interchangable and is dependent on a non-invasive electrode in the soil. Here, the visual language of the cactus are spikes or lines.

→ Experimentation with print-making.

→ A teaser video demonstrating the interactions.

→ A mini-zine consisting of a series of outcomes, titled 'PLANTANGIBLE'.

→ Each page is drawn by the Axidraw and generated with the help of numerical input from capacitive sensing.

→ Every page is the culmination of an interaction between participant and plant, whose name and species respectively are listed.

CONCLUSION

The interactions here allow you to explore the nuances of tactile gestures with a plant. A lot of scope for modularity in terms of devices as well as experimentation with visual language.

PROTOTYPE

See the protoype in further detail here.