TALKING TO A MILLION PEOPLE ABOUT HUMAN PLANT INTERACTION

A trip to the library

Matin Aimee and I visited the library and went through several magazine for our open studio set up inspirations. Here are some pics that caught my eye:

The setup!

After visiting the library and checking out magazines, I though i could utilise the wall space behind my desk which was previously bare.

I think my current setup is a major improvement on the previous one. While at first I was a bit overwhelmed with the critique, setting up again and looking at this version- that's much neater, has a better flow and also more professional- allows whatever work I've done so far to be highlighted even further.

And so, Open Studios begins!

Open Studios was a whirlwhind. I didn't really expect so many people to show up, but I tried my best to be at studio the entire time so I could explain my project to them and hopefully answer any questions they might happen to have.

Something quite funny about introducing Venka to my project was seeing how he interacted with my plants! He was so delicate and I later found out that he believs he has a black thumb. Maybe a project like this could help people with black thumbs also get over their feat of killing plants?

Feedback!

I had left a post-it and a pen at the tail-end of my setup to encourage visitors to write down some feedback. Above that, and somewhat of an ice-breaker, I also asked people to write down: if plants could talk, what would they say?

I thought the answers to the 'If Plants Could Talk, What Would They Say' question were quite superficial, and the feedback ones were much more useful, documented below:

The blue and green color choice is great. I dont think it stirs away at all from your whole concept. They are great at tying everything (nature and digital) together. Great work and the explorations are all relevant. Very cohesive project. Yay! Great job 🙂

Amazing work! It was such a joy to interact with the plant and read the brief and thought behind it. Greatly inspired me

Love this! The plant connecting to the sensor is super interesting

Love your project and set up!! I know you’re going to change the speeches for the plants but I think the sentences can be more conversation-like and inviting

The current prototypes don’t feel engaging as what I expect an interaction to be. Can the plant give me a smile, hi-5 or nod? Having said that, you’ve done a lot of experiments on how a plant feels input, simple touch capacitor can output so many things nice!

OMG! SO COOL! I love how responsive it is. Keep up the good work 🙂

You can go really big and conceptual with how you imagine the final outcome: future facing

Two approaches: am I communicating with the plant or communicating with the computer through the plant? The first one would personally feel a bit more interesting

Amazing! You should user test it with people who hate plants to see if it helps improve their connect to nature

I love the interactions between plant and touch! Really cool connection between tech + nature! Excited to see where you take this :) If plants could talk, maybe ChatGPT!

I also received some verbal feedback from some industry professionals:

Eugene from Publicis: Would be really cool if you could implement some technology that is able to differentiate between the people interacting with the plant!

Syarif from MAL: Really cool that there are loads of applications for this. Would be really interesting to see you execute this as some sort of interactive display in Bangalore because the number of billboards there are huge! (He also like how well articulated everything is) Lean into the long term vision: ubiquitous computing, what I imagine interaction to be on an ambitious scale

Andy from MAL: He liked the angle of how plants can be an extension of personality and the aspect of personifying and drawing them out. Lean into it, make it a more memorable experience for people. Also, maybe can frame the entire project with more of a story-telling narrative. Market this as a project that has massive impact. Find that angle, find that narrative and push for it. (Great presentation skills, think the MAL people are looking for copywriters so they had that angle or mindset)

Nithya from the Master’s Programme: She found all the experimentation to be super interesting so can make the documentation of that more in the centre stage/ highlight it more

We also met as a class where we went through each person's setup and analysed it in detail.

Prototype Two: interface could be better developed, the resetting of the normalisation every 2000 framecounts makes the incoming messages seem very random, Vision booklet can be bigger in size and more ambitious. Use of a projector screen was actually quite nice because it situates the entire interactive experience in one place, like a speech bubble, rather than a screen which seems separate

Reflections!

I received a lot of contrasting feedback over the past few days: some asking me to lean more into the speculative aspect while some asked me to bring it back to Bangalore, which is where this project began. I don't think it's really feasible for me right now to go back to Bangalore to really implement any of the above, and I personally would enjoy the speculative aspect more.

Additionally, the feedback I received from the class was to change the spatial configuration of my second prototype and perhaps involve the use of the projector once again.

It was at this point that I realised I had abandoned all of the theoretical concepts I had studied for dissertation and that aspect of turn-taking and interplay had completely disappeared from my current prototype. So, this means I need to take a step back and re-evaluate what I want this project to be in these precious few weeks I have left.