THE PLANTS SENSE

Maria Castellanos & Alberto Valverde
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Flora Robotica

• Can you introduce yourself?

  
  We started to work together in 2009, because we were both interested in the relationship between humans and machines. With different backgrounds; Fine Arts and Mathematics we joined forces in our art work together, and during the last years we have been focused our artistic practice in the creation of technological body interfaces, researching about he boundaries and the synergies between cyborgs and wearables as a paradigm of the body enhancement
  
  

• Can you present your project The plants Sense?  

  
  The plants Sense in a project focused in research about how we can create a body interface that allows us to feel the plants in our whole body.
  We propose to build a wearable device that allows us to connect ourselves with plants, and allow us to forge new bonds human-plant. A new way to feel plants, through our skin, a much more intimate an emotional way.
  During the last years we have been focused in environmental and plants approach in our art works. We have been developing a sensor to measure electrical changes in plants. And thanks to an algorithm we realise that we can measure this changes.
  However we only visualized the state of the plant in our previous projects. Now we would like to go ahead and develop a new stage. We would like to develop a second skin able to communicate plant-human. A second skin that allows us to feel the plants senses in our own body.
  
  

• What do you expect from this residency?

  
  Mainly we would like to learn about the experience of working with experts in other disciplines. Flora Robotica team is a multidisciplinary group with experts in architecture, electronics and computer engineering, etc.  And we think that these different points of view certainly contribute to enrich the result of the research.
  We are really excited with the idea of share our creative process with them, and build new approaches and ideas during the process together.
  
  Find more about Maria Castellanos & Alberto Valverde project here
  
  

crédits: ARTSHARE, Irene Ingardi

Inception Meeting group picture with the Flora Robotica team, CITA Copenhagen, September 26th
(from left to the right) Kasper Stoy (ITU), Phil Ayres (CITA), Heiko Hamann (UzL)