Description
An experiment between nature and technology, this cyborg hanging garden allows plants and artificial lights to coexist and coevolve based on people's movements. As visitors approach the installation, the light spectrum changes to enrich the energy provided to the plants' roots and to enliven the garage’s dark space. The installation makes viewers aware of the diversity of light we encounter in life: the lack of light, homogenous light in interior spaces, and overlighted spaces.
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ZENOVIA TOLOUDI
Zenovia Toloudi is an architect, artist, and Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College. She has received a Doctor of Design degree from Harvard, a Master of Architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology (as a Fulbright Fellow), and a Diploma in Architectural Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Venice Biennale, The Lab at Harvard, and Athens Byzantine Museum.
COLLABORATORS
Interaction design:
SPYROS AMPANAVOS
CURATOR'S STATEMENT
JUTTA FRIEDRICHS
As one walks closer to the Cyborg Garden by Zenovia Toloudi, the plants, one by one subtly light up. Like signals transmitted from underneath the pavement, feeding a constant stream of information into homes and workspaces, each plant is fed with light via an individual fiber optic cable welling up from an artificial source. The glowing tips illuminate unnoticed details of the plants and their roots, normally hidden. The sterile rows of cylindrical water vessels reminds one of a laboratory setting or specimen jars displayed in a natural history museum, preserving extinct or endangered organisms. The plants seem in danger; detached from their natural environment, they have become dependent on human care. The visitor’s proximity activates the life support mechanism, and light travels through the cables like nutrients through an IV drip, feeding the plants their essentials for survival. All twenty-five plants are connected to a central light and sensor network weaving together nature, technology and human spectators into one interdependent system.
Details
- Location:
- Upper Parking