Plant Sociotars

Plants have become the focal point for this project because of their non-hierarchical quality; no plant is more important than another. We thought this could usurp the anthropocentric order, and forge new ways of social thinking in the digital age of the anthropocene. Because plants are exempt from social expectations and impositions, we decided plants would be the best medium, or vessel, to use to explore the chosen social themes in a speculative design methodology. This aligns with Donna Harraway’s ideology of “making kin” with other species we share our planet with; “we require each other in unexpected collaborations, in hot compost piles”. Plant Sociotars is an experiment in a ‘hot compost pile’ - an attempt to find a revised form of digital existence using plant ideologies as a conceptual framework. 

Plants have desirable properties that cannot be found in the digital space. These include the ability to purify the air through Phytoremediation. “They make our surroundings more pleasant, and they make us feel calmer” and promote wellbeing. Plants also display intelligent systems of nutrient exchange that they carry out symbiotically: in forests, the mycelium and the trees are connected through a mycorrhizal network, “which connects individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals”. 

Plant ideology helps us reject social hierarchies, as the natural world does not adhere to the binaries or rules of things like gender bias. Most plants are hermaphrodites, meaning they are non-binary, or genderless. Gender is a western social construct where expectations are placed on males or females to exhibit masculine or feminine behaviour traits For example, “Males [are] more assertive and have slightly higher self-esteem than females. Females were higher than males in extraversion, anxiety, trust, and, especially, tender-mindedness”. The plant world does not adhere to these binaries, stereotypes or superficial social demands, it only cares about survival. Plants have specific needs; light, air, water, nutrients, space and correct temperature, nothing more - and without these they may die.

Hermaphroditic plants are a form of elevation into the beyond - where gender becomes insignificant, and importance manifests in the self-sustaining nature of the individual in its environment. Plant ideology therefore translates to a safer form of living-in-the-world for the often ostracised social-groups subjected to misogyny: women and non-binary, genderless, or transgender individuals. All plants are beautiful, valid, and serve a planetary purpose, the same should apply to humans. Gender equality and transcendence should be reflected in social undertakings, and the genderless/hermaphroditic sociotar is the embodiment of this speculative, plant-ideological, socio-digital future.

Plant ideology protects the world from toxins. Plants are natural air-purifiers, removing carbon dioxide and other harms from our atmosphere. For example, in the NASA Clean Air Study, Philodendron domesticum effectively removes formaldehyde to purify the air. Plants should be worshipped by humanity for their life-giving in the form of oxygen production. And “studies have shown plants can knock out stress by calming the sympathetic nervous system, and can also make people feel happier. More research shows spending time around nature has a positive effect on a person’s mood and energy levels”.

If this quality is used as a metaphor for online spaces, could our sociotars remove ‘toxins’ in the form of hate speech or fake news? Would they act as moderators of online spaces, with Venus fly-trap mouths that dissolve negativity before it multiplies? Perhaps through the medium of plants we can better answer the question of how people can react when faced with negative information.

The plant avatar will have very long roots to absorb information through the ground. The stems of the plants will also be very long in the style of the spider plant. The stems will be made of a stretchy woven fabric that looks like a filter. These will be able to stretch long distances to be able to reach the fake news. On the end of the stems there will be venus fly trap style flowers that can swallow the fake information. The stems will be green and the fly traps will be red like ‘headline news’ titles. 

These plants will have a foggy/misty background that looks murky and unclear. When the plant eats the fake news this will clear and blue sky will appear. The sound will work together with this - when it is foggy there will be lots of people talking over the top of each other. This will calm down and quieten when the fake news has been absorbed.

Plant ideology reflects real-world effects of a constant inundation of media; there is a plant that is ‘shy’(mimosa pudica). It's not that the plant is dying, that it's activating its “defence mechanism” to camouflage itself from being eaten by herbivores. It recoils as it is touched, a physical embodiment of how people might recoil if they are overwhelmed, withdrawing from interactions that they don’t enjoy, are overstimulating, or present them with other negative experiences or consequences. In the online world where we are in a ‘constant state of readiness’ (Mark Fisher) the shy plant teaches us it is okay to self-preserve, and is perhaps even a natural, and respectable response to certain stimuli.

To have two states. The plant avatar will be a balloon-like shape that pulses like a heartbeat. The mimosa pudica shyness plants (pink flowers) will cover the surface of the balloon shape. When the avatar is in its full shape, it will be fully inflated and you will be able to see all the flowers - the ‘heartbeat’ pulse will be slow like a relaxed heart. In this state the plant will be floating above the ground. When the plant avatar is triggered, the balloon shape will deflate and appear to be one small flower. The heartbeat will increase to represent the nervousness/shyness. The plant will also sink to bury itself in the ground and hide itself away.  

This plant will be against a pale blue background in its full state to represent a calm space where it feels comfortable. When the plant becomes shy and deflates, the background will become red to show discomfort. The shyness will be triggered by the frame shaking (like a creature stomping on the ground) and a loud shaking/clattering noise. When it is in its calm state the noise will be calming like a wave noise or birds singing.