Humans are urgently seeking ways to reconnect with nature. We see this in the millennial houseplant mania, in nature preserves dangerously overcrowded during the coronavirus pandemic, and in the growing number of startups offering direct farm-to-consumer products. But our very search for reconnection exposes our deep-seated belief in nature as “other”: if humans truly believed themselves to be inherently inseparable from nature, then there would be no “other” to reconnect to!

We know we are in need of a more post-humanist, multi-species ethics to guide us toward an inhabitable future for all. And we believe that such a multifaceted challenge requires a multidisciplinary approach. Drawing on cognitive neuroscience, creative technology, plant science, and art, we seek to create media that a) make humans’ inseparability from natural ecosystems intuitive, and b) bypass rational logic to activate instinctive care and support for nature-based climate solutions.

Anyone can tell you that the easiest way to develop an understanding, caring relationship is to sit down and have a chat. But, having forgotten how to be part of our natural ecosystems, humans have also forgotten how to communicate with nature - or even that phytobiome communication exists at all! Therefore, we’re researching how to apply today’s powerful digital technologies to the ambitious challenge of facilitating direct, interspecies dialogue between human and plant. THE PLANT IS PRESENT (BPI) hacks together the brain-computer interface of EEG, the plant-computer interface of MESR, and multisensory artistic media such as dynamic visualizations, MIDI-transformed plant music, and haptic transmitters in order to enable human-plant communication through the shared signaling language of action potentials.

In making plant “language” accessible to humans through digital technology, we aim to open people’s eyes to an expanded definition of communication and intelligence, as well as carving out a space for digital technology in the environmental movement. We do not approach the scientific signal of electrical potentials as ends in and of themselves, but as the basis for artwork that imaginatively relays the plants’ own expression and builds a felt relationship between species.