2012
On Sensitivity, Plants and Noise emerged as an exploration in response to Arthur Schopenhauer’s treatise “On Noise”, in which he expounds upon the effects of noise on living beings. Striking a conversation with three other philosophers on this theme, each was asked to contribute an aesthetic production involving an interpretation of noise to engage with the sensitivities of plants. Taking a group of mimosa pudica, “sensitive”, plants as the intended audience for this installation invites visitors to engage in the perceptual world of the plant through their own senses, tactilely, with touch’s immediate effects to be seen in the plant’s response of closing its leaves, sonically, visually, and verbally, through discourse and the enactment of the text, and the viewer’s ability to change which portions of text are displayed. Integrating sound composition, Plants Impercept by Nick Trotter, animation, Inelastic Colour, by The Department of Biological Flow, and a poetic/theoretical text, 99 Problems to be Told to a Plant, by Berit Soli-Holt, the project ultimately culminated as a collection of documentation from this discourse, the interactive installation, and a video, On Sensitivity, Plants & Noise, which captures the interaction between the mimosa pudica plants and their milieu.