On Interdependent Metabolic Structures: The Case of Cyborg Garden

Abstract

This paper revisits the concept of metabolic architecture by introducing the pair of plants and ambient computing, constructing a stage between automation and interaction. By acknowledging a technophilic present, the paper proposes ambient computing to control the metabolic architecture, but together with a vulnerable component, that of plants. This way it develops an interdependent system among technology, people, space, and plants. Assuming that in the future, the role of plants (and potentially people) will depend on computers, the automatic process requires to be thought together with vulnerability and unpredictability, so it is more humane. In this system, there is no redundancy, plants and ambient computing are predominant aspects of the design. The plants paired with ambient computing constitute a mediator for future technoecologies operating both through automation/control and people’s care/interaction. The paper explores this position through a project, which is a provocative statement on ecology, Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015).

1 Introduction

1.1 Metabolic Structures

Metabolic architecture is a design strategy engaging with “the living” and aiming to create impact in the daily lives, quality of space, and well-being of those who experience it [1]. Metabolic architecture deals with material transformations caused by either growth or decay of organic matter, or it relates to immaterial transformations caused by environmental or artificial stimuli. Through these processes, metabolism within architecture becomes an apparatus that produces constant changes in form, space, and in user perception. The ever-changing patterns of immaterial forces, may relate to weather conditions, it may be about movement of people, or movement of light and sound. Time involves the idea of replenishment; that the work is always new. Space comes into existence during the time the work moves or is moved. Such architecture becomes a machine that produces effects as well as time-sensitive and ephemeral spaces, which affect feelings, emotions, and senses, and can inspire people to stop rushing, wonder, reflect, and also connect. This approach is extensively presented in the chapter “Architecture and Living Matter(s): From Art/Architectural Installations to Metabolic Aesthetics,” published in The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture [1]. There is a number of speculative yet tangible examples, materializing these ideas, such as Photodotes installations series, which have started in 2011. The Photodotes series of installations emphasize how light’s relation to energy and survival affects human wellbeing. They consist of elements of mixed materials that display light emission while being light-wired to natural and artificial lights. They often combine hydroponics and fiberoptic cables illustrating how light accelerates the growth of living organisms, such as edible plants. These projects are experiments in space. They act as architectural interventions, also as visual commentaries and/or spatial statements. They intentionally interrupt peoples’ routines through the creation of a spatial interplay, a series of phenomena, triggering viewers’ curiosity, instigating multiple senses, beyond the visual promoting therefore an architecture in which audiences can participate in and react to (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Photodotes III: Plug-N-Plant (2013). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Photograph by Zenovia Toloudi.

1.2 Interdependency

Installation art has by definition the viewer as an integral component of the work - without them, the work does not exist [2]. But the degree of this integration, as well as the dynamics involved in it, vary. In most cases there is a common desire leaning towards automation, independency, performance, and spectacle. But in other cases where artists/architects have been working with the immaterial, and the temporal, one can examine how the creators have been re-producing temporal phenomena, what are the elements, the overall ambiance, the level of nuance, what triggers the change, etc. In addition how these creators have imagined the role of humans in the construction of this experience: how they have set up the experience, as automated, reactive, experiential, or interdependent.

The pioneer artists Otto Piene and Hans Haacke created and worked with machines that produce immaterial patterns and display flows of energy [3]. In case of Otto Pienne Lichtballett (1961) the creation of ever-changing rhythms and patterns of light moving in space, metabolic architecture is experienced in darkness and silence through projections, reflections, illuminations, and glows that evolve and flow into energy, infinity, imagination, and memory. Piene himself referred to the silent aspect of the work, as a reaction to loud sounds produced by the war [4]. The project has been automated in terms of the light patterns production. But to fully experience this dimension of healing, one would need to even had a kind of bad/loud past experience to heal from.

Hans Haacke blurred the boundaries between the artificial and natural, the mechanical and living. Haacke has been interested in systems and created works to intentionally show how things interrelate. The elements of his work have often been light, air, grass paired with machines that keep them “alive.” This machinic nature of many of his projects would shape the intangible, immaterial elements of space. Caroline Jones, in her essay Artist/System argues, that contemporary artists, like Olafur Eliasson, combine or even appropriate systems art by Haacke (which had no relation to human subjects at the time they were produced) with “perceptual investigations.” What is interesting here is that similar works in aesthetics and form, produced with few decades apart, they appear for a different purpose, having the exact opposite intentions (machines and automation versus humans and perception) [5].

1.3 The Vulnerability of Plants

To reinforce the presence of the immaterial and the metabolic in architecture, the Photodotes installations have been using plants both as matter and as systems of energy.

From other contemporary works that integrate plants there are two interesting ones by Sean Lally/WEATHERS and Jeremijenko [1]. In these, structure and living matter coexist and coevolve over time. Sean Lally/WEATHERS used multiple plants in Amplification (2006–2007), a project which explored the material energies and fluid dynamics in design materials [6]. In Amplification the plants are paired with a series of “facilitators,” such as tracers of humidity, fans, and lighting, which produced microclimates from heat, water vapor, condensation and air particulates; and therefore the plants offered variability in bloom, growth size, color, scent, and filtration of light. In this case, the immaterial aspects of the environment, such as temperature, humidity, scent, color, and light, materialized through the physiology of the plants. The plants were essentially sensors that capture the subtle changes of the environment and display them.

Engineer and artist Natalie Jeremijenko (1966–) similarly gives shape to the living by setting in relief the vulnerability of plants through public engagement in the ongoing art project, Tree Logic (1999–), at MASS MoCA [7]. The plants (inverted and suspended live trees) coexist within a forthright infrastructural system, designed with a metal armature, to support their “unnatural” evolution. By inverting the trees and showcasing their growth based on gravitropic and phototropic forces, Jeremijenko has set up a public experiment that reveals the vulnerability and adaptability of the plants.

In these works, the emphasis has been to use the plants, neither as after-the-fact additions to the left over/surrounding space of architecture/building, nor as decorative elements. But to make them instead integral components of the composition, equal at least, if not the most important elements. The plants in Photodotes, being organisms, function in multiple levels which have been explained thoroughly in other essays [1, 8, 9]. But in this paper, the investigation of plants lies on the fact that by being vulnerable and unpredictable they make the system as interdependent, and therefore the new environment as more humane.

Position.

This paper revisits the concept of metabolic architecture by introducing the pair of plants and ambient computing, constructing a stage between automation and interaction. By acknowledging a technophilic present, the paper proposes ambient computing to control the metabolic architecture, but together with a vulnerable component, that of plants. This way it develops an interdependent system among technology, people, space, and plants. Assuming that in the future, the role of plants (and potentially people) will depend on computers, the automatic process requires to be thought together with vulnerability and unpredictability, so it is more humane. In this system, there is no redundancy, plants and ambient computing are predominant aspects of the design. The plants paired with ambient computing constitute a mediator for future technoecologies operating both through automation/control and people’s care/interaction. The paper explores this position through a project, which is a provocative statement on ecology, Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015) (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Interaction Design: Spyridon Ampanavos. Photograph by Dimitris Papanikolaou.

2 The Case

2.1 About Cyborg Garden

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015), a hanging garden in large garage space, which included plants, plastic containers, waters, and fiberoptic cables, allowed plants and artificial lights to coexist and coevolve based on people’s movements. As visitors approached the installation, the light spectrum changed to enrich the energy provided to the plants’ roots while illuminating the garage’s dark space. The installation made viewers aware of the diversity of light we encounter in life: the lack of light, homogenous light in interior spaces, and over-lighted spaces.

Cyborg Garden was an isolated laboratory space for endangered organisms, which resembled a natural museum display of species threatened by extinction. Each plant was fed with light via an individual fiberoptic cable. The thick (transparent) fiberoptic cables brought intense light, subjecting each organism to the scrutiny of external observation by people. Cyborg Garden relied only on artificial light (other Photodotes explored natural light too) to explore a spectrum of wavelengths and colors that are orchestrated by people’s movements and interactions. The rationale behind the variation in light was to play out the extremes of homogenous and extremely bright artificial light in sealed environments, and to counter this with a diversity of light that more closely approximates natural light (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Interaction Design: Spyridon Ampanavos. Photograph by Saurabh Mhatre.

2.2 On Capsules and Cyborgs

Architect Kurokawa, one the founders of the Metabolism movement, wrote in 1969 that the “capsule is cyborg architecture” [10]. The aesthetics of cyborgs are often associated with automation and technology, wiring and connectivity, as well as machines, appliances and apparatuses [9]. Kurokawa had defined the cyborg as an organism that is partly automated, based on feedback and automated processes, which usually appear in science fiction as half man, half machine. Kurokawa considered the capsule as the ultimate form of prefabricated building, having emancipated itself from the land to become the immediate extension of the moving self, similarly to cars or the traditional Japanese kago [11]. In Japanese Metabolism, the capsule is small in size. It is linked to historical elements in architecture, such as the teahouse. The capsule is a tool, a machine for living. Through Philip Galanter’s theory of ‘complexism’, the capsule can refer to modular(ity), embodiment, protective vulnerability, voyeurism, unpredictability, complexity, immateriality and ephemerality [12]. By highlighting the capsule’s potential for complexism, the Capsule as Cyborg Bioarchitecture essay illustrates how Kurokawa’s statement can be reiterated to “capsule as cyborg bioarchitecture” [9] (Figs. 4 and 5).

Fig. 4.

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Interaction Design: Spyridon Ampanavos. Photograph by Dimitris Papanikolaou.

Fig. 5.

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Interaction Design: Spyridon Ampanavos. Photograph by Dimitris Papanikolaou.

These capsules have high capacity for autonomy, yet unpredictable to some extent in that they materialize the vulnerable self. The wiring of the plants with light energy, along with their capacity to be self-sufficient (e.g., bamboos used as autotrophs to produce their own food), establishes an automated process. As the bamboo nourishes itself by way of root systems, the units become self-sufficient. Fungus and contamination cause certain plants to die, revealing the vulnerability and unpredictability of life. Such fragile situations aspire for protection and surveillance. Enclosed in transparent capsules, these objects are vitrines for surveillance and voyeurism [1] (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Interaction Design: Spyridon Ampanavos. Photograph by Dimitris Papanikolaou.

Therefore, the role of the user is integral to plants’ existence, as humans, technology, and plants become one interdependent system: the users co-author the event as custodians taking care of the plants, or as performer-spectators offerring the light energy and nutrition through movements and interactions. Depending on human interaction, the plants either flourish or die. Such an unpleasant encounter with their vulnerability cultivates empathy. In Cyborg Garden, the plants’ presence documented the ever-changing light through their growth and evolution. The metabolic materialized in the interdependent relationship between users and structures [1] (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Interaction Design: Spyridon Ampanavos. Photograph by Dimitris Papanikolaou.

3 Ambient Computing

3.1 Lights and Interaction

On the interaction level, the installation is a system of plants, lights, and humans. The visitors become part of the system by directly affecting the amount of light that the plants receive.

Sensing.

The presence of the visitors is monitored by an array of proximity sensors. The system uses five Parallax Ping Ultrasonic Range Sensors placed in equal distances along the whole length of the hanging garden. The sensors correspond to five sections, each containing four plants. In this way we gather data describing the presence of people around each of the five groups of plants.

Acting (Lights).

Each plant receives light from a 3 W RGB LED source through a fiberoptic cable. In total there are twenty plants, with twenty fiber optic cables, and twenty RGB LEDs.

Control.

The LED lights are controlled by an Arduino Mega. In order to receive full color information, each LED requires three signals, which totals to sixty outgoing signals from the Arduino. To make this possible, we daisy-chained eight shift registers (74HC595), regulating external power to sixty channels with a simple transistor configuration for each signal.

For ease of development and convenience of deployment, the ultrasonic sensors are connected to a separate Arduino Uno. The two micro controllers are connected through serial port communication.

Behavior.

The information from the sensors is translated to an attention metric, with regard to proximity and duration of the human presence. In a busy physical environment like that of the deployment, the interaction mostly takes place through movement of crowds and less of individuals, which makes the information from the five sensors enough to closely approximate the human presence. The sensor’s data are interpolated to achieve a smooth transition between the corresponding areas.

The system responds to attention by changing the amount and the color of the lights. Higher attention will trigger brighter light. The most intense interaction - i.e. when attention exceeds a predefined threshold - triggers an “explosion” effect: a very intense light around the center of attention, that propagates to the whole garden in the form of a wave, gradually fading out.

4 Discussion

4.1 Dual Vulnerability

This paper explained the role of dual vulnerability when inserted in a hybrid design, such as the Cyborg Garden installation. The installation became the interface to instigate this duality: people to take care of the plants and plants to take care of people. The hybrid character of the work, which included: contrasting high and low tech materials; the playful component of light interactivity; the spectacular wiring (emphasizing the feeding through light and transferring of energy); the performative aspect for viewers through their body and facial movements it is what eventually activated the actions, thoughts, and relationships.

During the event, people interacted with the plants, but also with each other. Also, the encapsulated plants triggered their curiosity. They asked questions about the feeding, the life cycle. And the imagined other techno-ecological life-cycles for these organisms. At the same time the plants were there to remind people the need to be connected to natural and/or varied light, to be aware about their body rhythms, routines, a better life-style.

4.2 On Future Technoecologies

Hughes claimed that in the future, machines will be more like people, and people will be more like machines [13]. This statement can spark questions about how future architecture will be shaped based on automation? And what would the future gardens look like?

Cyborg Garden framed the need for design based on living bio-rhythms. The plants paired with ambient computing constitute the mediators, between energy and us, activators of our emotions. By visualizing real-time, in a bold way, the transferring of energy to our bodies, the installation educates us (or enforces us) to take care of the plants, to take care of ourselves, to activate our feelings, and emotions (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8.

Photodotes V: Cyborg Garden (2015). Project by Zenovia Toloudi/Studio Z. Interaction Design: Spyridon Ampanavos. Photograph by Dimitris Papanikolaou.