plants

When I was a child I used to spend summers at my grandparent's house. I was very close with my grandfather, my mother's father. He was a stonemason thus they had a big backyard, and when I say big I mean around 150m big! There were a lot of different flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables... I used to go with him everywhere. I remember him going to his friend, researching special varieties of apples to plant, or taking care of his kiwi vines, looking if there are enough males or females left. He even grew a lemon tree high as the room in the summer kitchen. He was always looking for the most unusual plants accessible in our surroundings. I used to take care of veggies with him, we planted the orchard together, collected chicken eggs and fed pigs and goats. I was always surrounded by greenery and nature.
Our family house since I can remember was always full of plants. No matter where we lived they were always our companions, and our garden was always full of interesting specimens. My mother has a great passion for plants too, eventually, she became a gardener and now she has her own plant nursery. It seems like being passionate about plants is something genetically, passed from generation to generation, or maybe it's a feeling of familiarity, the environment we grew up in, and what seems like a home to us.
My eye and my soul are so used to have a plant companion in my life that, if there are no plants in the room where I'm spending a lot of my time, I feel uncomfortable. There are people who are very closely connected to animals, in my case it was never like that. Although I love animals, I'm feeling always a slight distance from them, as I'm leaving them to be what they are without the necessity of me being part of their life. With plants is a different story. When I'm in their company or being surrounded by them as in a forest, I'm feeling as I'm fully embraced, I can just be there and my heart is full of joy, I don't have to speak but we communicate. It feels like I am where I belong, it feels like home.

Plants I collaborated with within the work 'Conversations', initially were not planted with this specific work in mind. When I decided to germinate seeds I wanted to make an outside garden and I was very determined to do so. Garden was supposed to be part of the Invisible artwork which never took place in real life thus partially is invisible.
Although I wasn't sure how my graduation work will look like, one thing was certain: in whichever direction work will go it has to include plants I'm growing.
As I was watching them grow there was a feeling of responsibility knowing their life depends on me, I knew my decisions will shape their life. Besides the responsibility of plant life, I also had a responsibility towards the life of an artwork, because at the moment plants sprouted, an artwork was born as well. At that time direction in which the life of the artwork will go was not known, but that's just the nature of life, isn't it?

At around some time I started working on a collaborative project of Prince Claus Conservatory and Academy Minerva. During the project, I met a harpist Aurélie Journot, while working on the same research. As we enjoyed working with each other, we decided to continue our project after the collaboration was over. Our research was on plants and in which way they respond to change in frequencies. For the experiment with the plants, we used harp, electronics and observation methods. Our first step was a performance for the university collaboration but for the second step she decided to help me with my graduation work, which was based on our project, where we ended up far further than we could imagine at the beginning, and we managed to do it in a small amount of time.

We've our main working tool was a GSR sensor that would send raw data from the plants to the computer where data is changed to sound frequencies. At the same time Aurélie would react to the sound she's getting from the plant then a mix of plant sound with harp would be sent back to the plant and the process would be repeated again.

For my work, I decided to use the base of the ongoing project but instead of one plant, I collaborated with three of them. Each of them had one sensor and a speaker underneath. They would individually send data to the computer where data was translated to sound frequencies merged together and that mix would be sent through speakers for them to hear. In that way, they could hear frequency responses from themselves but also from the other two plants.

The idea is to move the focus from the artist and to give plants the opportunity of them becoming a performer/artist.
I look at the plants as individuals, the same as we treat animals and humans. They are highly developed creatures, but because of our language barrier, egocentrism and ignorance we look at them as aliens on earth, a product, decoration or a pest.

While working on human senses and bio-art I got interested in other species senses and by some kind of logic I thought - well if humans and animals have senses why wouldn't plants have to? At the end of the day, we are all organisms with a different kind of tissue, way of living, moving but one thing we all share is - life.
I started intensively researching as this topic is very interesting to me and found out that plants are by far more genetic material, therefore, are more capable of adjusting to the new environment in a very short time (time not counted in human lifetime years).
They have extraordinary defence mechanisms, ways of feeding, relationships with other animals and are capable of solving problems such as obstacles, danger...
"...scientific inquiry: On planet Earth, is there really only 0.3 per cent of animal life compared to 97.7 per cent of plant life? Then plants are dominant beings, while there are only trace amounts of animals." (Mancuso S., Viola A., 'Briliant Green', Island Press, 2015.)

They have the capability of vision, smell, touch, taste and hearing only their mechanism is completely different than ours.

Work 'Conversations' is important to me on a personal level. That work meets several of my big interests which I abandoned through time or approached separately. For example, working with electronics, I do indeed love to work with technology and it makes me happy, but during these two years, it wasn't the right time for me to use it as a medium. I believe I had to develop other parts of myself to understand which is the right direction for me and what is the main drive in my work. When I look back I understand the ideas and passion I had for works I wanted to make back then, and I still do, but if I didn't go for different paths I would never know the other side of my artistic practice.

The first photo is showing an acupuncture needle that stayed inside of one of the plants for several days. There are several things that I notice about this. First, the transparent yellowish matter was on top of the needle which was hugging the needle in the place needle stabbed the stem. The other interesting thing about it is the dark spot on the needle. That is the place where liquid produced by plant (I assume something acidic) ate the metal to the point that it got so thin and broke eventually. I've also realised that at the beginning when I would stab the needle in the stem it didn't leave a big trace afterwards, but after some time it memorised foreign objects and every time I would stab the needle it would identify it and send plants defence mechanism directly.