A talk about trees and plants, plant intelligence, the future “internet of plants” - and how we might work with the plants (both virtual and real) to tell stories and “write” in new ways.

1. The Internet of Plants
Tim Wright
@moongolfer
timwright@xpt.com

2. Original Interactive Content
About Me

3. Broadcast Properties & Projects
About Me

4. Writing: TV, Web, Brands, Books, Radio, Theatre…
About Me

5. R&D
Teaching
Training
NFTS
Immersive

6. ‘Real’ Characters
Caroline Close
Webcam+email drama
24 episodes
Data-driven
Personalised
Extended Storyworld
Seemingly ‘Live’

7. ‘Personal’ Communication

8. “Caroline – big commiserations on your
burglary! Do you know that it was all set up as
‘extra entertainment’ for viewers?...”
“I’ve let the police know but they weren’t really
able to do anything cos i don’t know your
address. I phoned them again but they started
getting a bit shirty...”
"Who the hell are you and why have
you been sending messages to my
dad? He has got my mum and would
not want anyone else!"
2,500 EMAILS per month*
100+ ansaphone messages per week
*April 2000 – March 2001
Audience Content

9. GRIDS/FIELDS/CODE
‘The wrong tools for the job’

10. ‘Intelligent’ Content Systems

11. Objects that ‘write’

12. The Haunter
Guides people through a
landscape
Recites poetry, and plays
found media at specific
locations and times/dates
Records voice messages
at specific locations and
times/dates
Opens a secret
compartment only in one
place

13. Knows what food it has inside
Connected to all the other fridges in
the world
A communication console for
contacting/playing with family (and
Claude Blanc)
A trap baited with food for capturing
particular mythical beasts
An audio sequencer for simulating
beast calls
Prints personalized stories about
what goes on in the night
My Friend
The Fridge

14. a remote old empty
church that follow its lost
congregation online
a building that learns to
speak, talk about itself –
and tell stories…
The Intelligent
Church

15. driven by sensor data
light detection
audio detection
presence detection
site-specific interaction
localised audio
lighting/projection
locking/unlocking
robotics
The Intelligent
Church

16. A Ship Adrift
“A Ship Adrift takes the data
from that weather station
and applies it to an
imaginary airship piloted by
a lost, mad AI autopilot.
I wanted to make the ship
move, and I wanted to make
it speak, and I wanted to
speak back to it, with it,
together.”
- James Bridle

17. “Every thing will be part of
the web … [everything]will
have embedded in it some
sensor connecting it to the
machine … the new
economy really is where we
embed the information and
the digital nature of things
into the material world”
Kevin Kelly - The Next 5000
Days of the Web

18. The Internet of
Plants
Sunlight, Air Temperature,
Humidity, Rainfall, Wind Speed
& Direction
Soil Moisture & Temperature
(at several different depths)
Soil Conductivity.
Trunk & Stem Diameter
Underground Sound
Airborne Sound
Insect Presence

19. Phytomonitoring
Air Vapour Pressure Deficit.
Leaf Temperature
Sap Flow Rate in plant stems and trunks
Blossom Colour
Canopy Analysis
Photosynthesis: a 'quantum sensor' to measure
accurately "Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density"
Porometry. "Stomatal aperture is the dominant
factor in the diffusion conductance of leaf
surfaces”
Optical Absorbance Meters for Epidermal
Polyphenolics. "quickly and quantitatively
estimate the concentration of Flavonols and
Anthocyans in fruit and vegetables
Dynamax, AgriSupport and Fruition Sciences,
phytomonitoring sensors

20. What’s The Story?
• a year’s worth of tree-related data
and media
• a rambling sequences of text, or
noises (like a small baby or
toddler)
• streams of movies or search terms
or code generated by plant sensor
data
• “Lemony wants move to a cooler
place”

21. See how homeowners, DIYers,
and people off-the-grid are
using FarmBot to feed their
families
An open-source, wireless,
Internet of Things
Greenhouse monitoring and
automation system for your
farm or garden.
HarvestGeek
Farmbot

22. “When the capabilities of
vegetative beings become
known, and their emotional
lives and needs are
recognized, then the way we
treat plants will gradually
change.”
- Peter Wohlleben, The
Hidden Life of Trees
Battery Farm Plants

23. Elowan
"Using its own internal
electrical signals, the plant is
interfaced with a robotic
extension that drives it
toward light,"
“an attempt to
demonstrate what
augmentation of nature
could mean … part of
the emerging field of
Cyborg Botany”

24. The user can type a message. The sentiment
is gauged [as] ‘negative’ or ‘positive’.
In a series of blinks of different light colors,
the message is conveyed to the plant. If the
sentiment was particularly positive, the
capsule uses long red blinks, since red light
helps plants flower. Sensors monitor the
leaves, roots, air and soil to get the gist of
how the plant is feeling.
After gathering this data, the plant’s
“response” is determined to be either
positive or negative and is translated
through Twitter.
Project Florence

25. AI & MACHINE
LEARNING
• The simulation of intelligent
behaviour in computers.
• The capability of a machine to
imitate intelligent human behaviour.
• The capability of a machine to
imitate not-so intelligent human
behaviour.
• AI as “the field of computer science
dedicated to solving cognitive
problems commonly associated with
human intelligence, such as
learning, problem solving, and
pattern recognition.”

26. IBM Watson: AI Filmmaking

28. Plant Intelligence
" No-one I spoke to in the loose, interdisciplinary
group of scientists working on plant intelligence
claims that plants have telekinetic powers or feel
emotions. Nor does anyone believe that we will
locate a walnut-shaped organ somewhere in plants
which processes sensory data and directs plant
behavior.
More likely, in the scientists’ view, intelligence in
plants resembles that exhibited in insect colonies,
where it is thought to be an emergent property of a
great many mindless individuals organized in a
network. Much of the research on plant intelligence
has been inspired by the new science of networks,
distributed computing, and swarm behavior, which
has demonstrated some of the ways in which
remarkably brainy behavior can emerge in the
absence of actual brains.“
Michael Pollen, The Intelligent Plant, New Yorker

29. Plant NeuroBiology
The writings of plant neurobiologists
suffer from “over-interpretations of
data, teleology,
anthropomorphising, philosophising
and wild speculations…”
“…the last confrontation between
the scientific community and the
nuthouse.”
– Clifford Slayman, professor of cellular and
molecular physiology, Yale

30. Seeing
"You have to judge intelligent
behaviour in terms of what [plants]
can actually do, and that is changing
growth or [appearance]."
"They will do this actively in
response to their perception of the
environment in which they live. But
changing growth patterns is very
slow and thus we end up not
perceiving any kind of behaviour at
all.“
Professor Anthony Trewavas

31. Smelling
The Dodder plant can
intelligently assess and
smartly ‘forage’ in its
environment.
Smells out good - and
rotten - tomatoes.

32. Hearing
“plants can not only "smell"
the chemicals and "see" the
reflected light of their
neighbours, they may also
"listen" to the plants around
them.”
- Monica Gagliano, evolutionary
ecologist , University of Western
Australia

33. “acacias nibbled by antelope
produce leaf tannin in quantities
lethal to the browsers, and emit
ethylene into the air which can
travel up to 50 yards. The ethylene
warns other trees of the impending
danger, which then step up their
own production of leaf tannin
within just five to ten minutes.”
Chemical Messaging

34. Electrical Signalling
“We hypothesized that if insect
damage caused trees to
communicate, maybe damage
with an axe or nail would cause
the tree to send an immediate
message to the surrounding
trees.”
W-Waves and Plant Communication,
Wagner 1988
Electrical impulses that pass through the roots of
trees move at the slow rate of one third of an inch
per second…

35. The Mycelium Network
This ‘wood wide web’…
‘…By linking to the fungal network
trees can help out their neighbours
by sharing nutrients and information
– or sabotage unwelcome plants by
spreading toxic chemicals through
the network.”
- Nic Fleming, BBC Earth

36. The Sessile Lifestyle
"A goal for the future would be
to determine the extent of
knowledge that a cell has of
itself and how it uses that
knowledge in a thoughtful
manner when challenged…”
“…the response to challenge is
behaviour and thoughtful
responses are intelligence.“
- Anthony Trewavas

37. Virtuality/Reality
Embodiment
Presence
Multisensory
Empathy
Body Language
Other Worlds
Impossible Spaces
Haptics

38. Mixed Reality

39. Seedlng MR Game

41. • Velocity – Distance – Steps – Calories
• Heart Rate – Sweat - Blood Sugar
• Tension/Pressure
• Mood – Happiness – Smile
• Sleep Patterns – Brain Waves
• Proximity – Relative Happiness - Environment
• Gender – Ethnicity – Class
Virtual Objects
+ Personal Data

42. Volumetric Capture +
Virtual Humans
“With virtual reality, the goal is to
make the belief structure so real
that you can’t tell if something is
really happening or not.”
- Ted Schilowitz, futurist,
Twentieth Century Fox

43. “Can’t put your blackberry down? Feel bored when
you’re not at work? Late-night binge behavior?
Believe it or not, all these things have a lot to do with
dopamine – the neurotransmitter that’s heavily
involved in the pleasure centre within the brain”
Dopamine, Cortisal, Seratonin
“By measuring my brain waves in meditation, I was
able to track progress and see when my own
meditations were moving closer to producing the
luminous awakened mind state.”
https://elemental.medium.com/what-i-learned-tracking-my-brainwaves-for-6-months-6c394750a1d5
Brainhacking

44. What Is Successful IoP Storytelling?
Real Plants
Growth – Propagation – Pest Control -
Resource Sharing – Environmental
Control
Digital Media/Stories
Attention – Reach – Sharing –
Approval/Likes – Comment - Behaviour
Change – Cultural Authority – Revenue
–– Trust – Unique Testimony
Humans
- ???

45. Human Story Farms
for Plant Wellbeing
Could the plants learn to
farm digital human
output/stories and use it
to create optimal
conditions for plant
success?
Could digital/virtual
human output be
‘improved’ by the
influence of plants?

46. Marshmallow
Laser
Feast
“If I was a sculptor, I would
totally be using this stuff to scan
nature and then manipulate it
afterwards. We’re taking control
of the eyeballs and ears, and
exploring touch as well. Once
you have control of the human
senses, then you can kind of take
people anywhere… a virtual
world that feels tangible and
real.”

47. Behaviour Change
T. gondii has been shown to alter the behavior of
infected rodents in ways thought to increase the
rodents' chances of being preyed upon by cats.
In the United States, almost one in four residents
over the age of 12 has the infection. In other parts
of the world, rates are as high as 95 percent.
Studies comparing the infected and the
noninfected raise the possibility that the parasite
tweaks a person’s personality or ups the risk of
suicide attempts, brain cancer and schizophrenia.
Studies in people even report links between T.
gondii and traffic accidents, greater odds of
having sons than daughters, extra height and
unusual opinions about the smell of urine.

48. #transmediacompote
“Maybe the jam I make from the
fruit of the tree is itself a
*chemical* code, and, with each
bag of jam that gets consumed, a
secret story can be distributed not
by an audience but *in* an
audience.
And then cell-level change can
take place…”

49. Could the health of our plants govern the content we
consume & the stories we tell?
How do we measure the ‘success’ of a story?
Should we stop making books out of vegetative
beings?
What kind of stories will plants produce?
Are stories biochemically ‘good for you’?
What are the new forms of creative collaboration (with
people and ‘things’)?
Is this the future of mind alteration & behaviour
change?
Should plants have rights (inc IP rights)?
Plant writing/reading = healthier planet?
Thoughts +
Questions

50. Thankyou
@moongolfer
timwright@xpt.com
#immersivecompote