GMU:Artists Lab:Zhen Qin

Interactive Botanic art

Description of idea :Just as you become accustomed to the equipment around you, and just as you’re able to make something momentarily perfect out of it, the seasons change, you grow some more, and the cycle starts again. It’s a beautiful process, and how to capture this momentary beauty, to create some thinking out of it, to give people some feeling about it.

• An botanic installations, show reaction to people's movement.
• Focused on to amplify the relation between human and nature.
• Approach :physical installations that sense the participants and create reactions.

As each participant come closer to the plants, their movement are sensed and cause minor impact on the movements of these plants, hopefully creating the feeling that there is life inside this botanic installations and they are breathing、trembling or rotating because of sensing the participants, like they are telling a story. By using natural plants and create a botanic installation, the intended outcome is

• a mechanism to control the plants and have them connected with fabric.
• using multiple sensors to detect participant's movements
• present minor reactions to participants.

What kind of story will the participants feel from them?

Further links: Anya Gallaccio preserve ‘beauty’ http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gallaccio-preserve-beauty-t11829

preserve ‘beauty’ is an installation work composed of bright red flowers arranged in four adjacent rectangular compositions underneath large panes of clear glass. The flowers are presented in a single layer with their heads facing out towards the viewer, and their stalks are positioned downwards, so that the lower edge of each panel features a band of green made up of the stems of the bottom row of flowers. The type of flower used in the installation is a hybrid between a gerbera and a daisy that is known by the name ‘beauty’. During the period in which preserve ‘beauty’ is displayed, the flowers wither and die, and this decay process is visible to viewers through the glass. Due to the shrinkage of the flowers as they rot, the glass panels require adjustment over the period of display, and the dead flowers often fall out of the glass and decompose further on the floor. Viewers experience the installation through their sense of smell, as well as visually: they encounter either the smell of the flowers when they are fresh or their rotting odour as they decay, depending on the amount of time that has lapsed since the work was put on display.

Use the natural shape of plants to convey the feelings.

Progress:

Currently I am still at the stage of experimenting arduino kits, the ideas are: Ultrasonic sensor: Detecting on visitors‘ distance from 10cm- 100cm Servo: playing the movement of open and close and this creates reaction to human. Sound sensor:Detecting noises and send signals to the motor. The following picture shows some code to motivate the servo, there may need more servos in the following steps to create better movements. Possible Materials: