PlantWriting

Art in a speechless room

For human senses it is hard to fetch the so called self-refering sound or the undefined chaos of the plant kingdom. Reports of events dealing with the mental contact between plants and man can very easily be seen in an esoteric light. The implementation of a basic pattern, of a geometric design or of a programm into the speechless room between plants and man seems to be a condition for communication. Not a direct or indirect response is the main aim. The intention is to develope the will to tear down the door-less walls of the speechless room and to start a communicative interchange. The plant installation ELF-FIELD is an attempt to "understand", to "see" and to "listen to" a plant to succeed in the surmounting of the speechless room between plant and man - in the context with art.

 

 

 

 

Plant installation ELF-FIELD for PLANT WRITING and PARALLEL DRAWING

Function: This installation allows the plant and the involved person to let the PLANT WRITING and the PARALLEL DRAWING emerge. This happens while signals from the leave of a plant are led into a computer and are developed via a detector and a software program into PLANT WRITING. The involved person draws parallel the PARALLEL DRAWING by clicking the mouse of a second computer. That means, the plant agrees to the ELF-FIELD set up by giving its physically caused signals and the involved person using the installation is able to follow and to copy the recording pattern of the plant. This can be compared with a controlled dialog. One partner "talks" and the other enquires until the situation turns. The plant installtaion ELF-FIELD allows its user an interchange with the plant by intuitive answers on a sub-dialog level. Measurement technology of the plant installation ELF-FIELD. Regarded from the technical point of view the following happens while the installation is working: Electrodes are attached to the undersurface of the leave and register the expulsion of water vapour. The changing expulsion of the water vapous generates a swaying of tension. That will be registered by the measuring unit and filtered into the millivolt sector.

The extent to which the electrostatic voltic sways is recorded by a uni- or bipolar amplifier and processed by the measuring unit of the computer. The recorded swayings partly emerge from the inner physical activities of the plant; another part results from a reaction to the signals which are given by clicking the specially constructed mouse of the second computer. Connecting the amplifier to the measuring unit of the first computer and the contained software program FLANZSEE1.01, which transforms the recorded measurements, generates a graphic facility for the plant to record its own inner and outer electrostatic activities by writing.

Contents of the plant installation ELF-FIELD: The ELF-FIELD installation contains two computers, monitors, printer, keyboard, etc. The installation includes as well a measuring unit, an AD-converter and a drawing program. The measurement unit works with a high impedance in the pico ampere reagon. The AD-converter is digitalizing the analog results taken of the plant. A specially created software program FlanzSee 1.01 turnes the results of the measurements into a graphical dimension which is the PLANT WRITING. The leave of a plant is connected to the measurement order, which itself is connected to one of the computers of the installation. The involved person is parallel working at the second computer.