Interactive plants form internal communication networks

According to Mulder, interactive art is "when two systems are linked together and through that linkage change each other." This connection of systems usually require a medium, a human and a receiver of the information transmitted (living or non-living). This anthropomorphic ideology reveals an ignorance towards the specificity of interaction, furthermore that "people are as intelligent as they make their environment... [people] are their environments as much as they are themselves." This human-centric built environment or 'the self' often prevails over a large connection of communication and interactivity: the natural world.

Researcher Josef Stuefer of the Radbound University Nijmegen discovered that particular herbal plants naturally form interior networks in order to communicate information. This interactive experience relies not on our (human) existence but rather that of networked plants connecting through complex runners which warn each other of various intrusive enemies. Therefore, "Once warned, the intact plants strengthen their chemical and mechanical resistance so that they are less attractive for advancing caterpillars." These chemical and mechanical defense systems are the medium or linkage between the communication within the network, allowing these biological changes to manipulate and eventually change the physicality of the plant. According to Mulder, this system of interaction would be a cold media experience, in that this transformation of information (interactivity) takes place within a finite, molecular level of viewing. This mediated experience of unmeasurable, invisible transfered data from plant to plant requires a certain level of scientific conceptuality within the research.

This representation of interaction beyond the generalized human to "something" contact can reveal conceptual reflections on our social relationships. In that, our observational knowledge gathered from nature has and continues to reveal implications and complications of human interaction. This cold or perhaps even non-experience reflects similar relations to our digital relationships through the explosion of online social networking. This systems of communication via runners mirror our use of hardware, software and servers on the internet. The plant's individual connections serves as a defense for a larger communal "good". I personally view the internet as a created global space to diversify and extend knowledge through a system of interconnecting media. Furthermore, our built environment (or the 'self') could be viewed as a re-mediation of the natural world, in that our perception of anything within our observed, known space was directly/indirectly influenced by a larger connection or simply put, nature.

Source:
http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_76QJ5P_Eng

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