Entangled Habitation:
Exploring Human-Plant Interaction Through a Posthuman Lens
Entangled habitation refers to a deeply intertwined and entangled living status between human and non-human beings, e.g., plants. In this paper, we explore the entangled habitation design concept to advocate a more-than-human perspective in human-nature interaction design. Following the entangled habitation design concept, we implemented three plant-based wearables to reframe human’s interactions with plants. VibrateNerve translates the leaves’ wellbeing information (i.e., temperature) to vibrations on a wearable ring that simulates pain. BreatheTogether transforms plants’ photosynthesis effectiveness into the floating air inside a wearable lung that mimics breathing. Finally, GrowthTouch collects plants’ real-time motion and maps it to intimate touch in a wearable mask. All three wearables constructed the plantness on human bodies and fundamentally questioning what plants can and might be an entangled part of human and cohabitate with human. Our design speculations also demonstrate a framework extend nonhuman sensory capabilities into human body perceptions and produce an entangled habitation.
Figure 1. A. VibrateNerve is a wearable artifact on the finger and arm that integrates multiple sensors to assess and feel the plants stress through vibration. B. BreathTogether is a wearable artifact that physicalizes plant’s breath with the varying size of an airbag by interacting with the photosynthesis data of a plant. C. GrowthTouch simulate intimate touch triggered by plants’ actual movement on human face.
In our work, the human body is designed to be a tangible media, interfacing with a set of embodied wearable organs (i.e., body parts) that captures plants’ sensorimotor consciousness. Based on plants’ sensorimotor information, we proposed a series of wearable artifacts following the entangled-habitation posthumanism design concept: (1) VibrateNerve, a wearable ring that simulates haptic sensation on the human body based on plants’ leaves wellbeing; (2) BreathTogether, a wearable lung on the neck that physically embodies plants breath by transforming the data of its photosynthesis effectiveness; and (3) GrowthTouch, a wearable face-wearing which simulates touch with “hands” that is triggered by plants’ real-time movement.
#1 VibrateNerve
Inspired by soma design’s manifesto to “focus on bodies and perception”, we ideated the first artifact to simulate common senses of plants on human bodies. In this way, a sense of symbiosis and empathy will be evoked in human perception, which is a potential way to practice arts of noticing. Specifically, we aim to design the noticing by bodily connecting humans and plants and building sharing sensation via the interaction. We provoked a wearable artifact on the finger and arm that integrates multiple sensors to assess and feel the plants stress through thermal imaging.
VibrateNerve is a wearable artifact on the finger and arm that integrates multiple sensors to assess and feel the plants stress through vibration
The designed artifact integrates a thermal camera, humidity sensor, vibration motor and LCD screen on the finger and arm. To assess and care for the plants’ health, a user needs to directly touch the plants’ leaves with finger. If the stress is detected, the motor will vibrate and create a feel of pain/ stress on the user’s arm, thus enhancing empathy between humans and plants.
TempTouch
2021/07/14
Every plant has its own temp, and it is an important standard for assessing the plants’ health. Most of the current studies apply this tech by putting a thermal cam near the plants reading the data. This is a common but industrialized way of ‘noticing’ the plants. Yet, the intimacy and relationship is lacked. I aim to raise the notice by physically connecting humans and plants, by designing a wearable sensor that integrates thermal cam, humidity sensor, vibration motor and LCD screen. To assess and care for the plants’ health, a user should touch the plants’ leaves with his finger. If the stress is detected, the product will vibrate and create a feel of “pain” or “stress” on the user’s arm, thus enhancing empathy between humans and plants.
First week prototype
I recorded the temp data for 24h of three different plants: Green Radish，Gardenia，Begonia. Next step I’m thinking how to actually assess the health with thermal cam. According to the scientific research, it has to be used with carbon nanotubes to detect nitroaromatic compounds. Otherwise, I just detect the variation of the temp.
FIgure2. Recording of data: EnvTemp, EnvHumidity, LeafMeanTemp, LeafMaxTemp, LeafMinTemp.
2021.7.15 — Temp recording experiment
Today I had a super interesting finding by recording different condition (dried & healthy) of leaf of each plant. The data is shown below:
Temp recording(G=healthy leaf, D = unhealthy leaf)
Turns out that dead leaf of Begonia has LOWER temp than healthy one (both aveTemp and maxTemp). And the maxTemp of good one sometimes surpass the envTemp. The other two turns out to be the opposite: the unhealthy leaf of Gardenia and Green Redish has HIGHER temp than healthy one (both aveTemp and maxTemp). The maxTemp of unhealthy one ocassinally surpass the envTemp.
This is an intersting finding that I can use in the product: for Gardenia and Green Redish, to assess and find out the unhealthy leaf, I can analyze the maxTemp of leaf to see whether it is appraching the envTemp. And for Begonia, I plan to analyze the aveTemp to see if it has an obvious difference with envTemp (in this case -2.0 ℃).
2021/07/16 Temp Experiment Data
2021/7/16
Today I do the experiment again and it turns out that only green radish has obvious temprature difference between healthy one and unhealthy one. Probably I should use it for my later product design. 👌
There might be some variables that was not controlled well in the test yesterday. Today I stick the sensor on the table so that the leaf placement angle, leaf location are
kept to be the same.
2021/07/17
Next Step is to test the temp variation of manual damge on the leaf. (eg.🤏）The system can also involve stronger vibration feedback if the user is hurting the plants (eg.🤏), cuz the temp’s gonna instantly rise if the leaf is being pinched.
VibrateNerve stimulates plant’s skin (receptor) and pain nerve (effector) on human body, thus creating the intimate connection and misplaced senses between human and plants. Human body, plants’ body, plants’ stress state, human’s feeling jointly merges a sensory system, an entangled more-than-human body. Through the encouraged intention to touch the plants, the uncomfortable feeling shared by the plants, we decenter ourselves and look outward to the other beings in the world. We touch the others with our own body, and we feel the pain of the others. As Kimmerer stated “Paying attention to the more-than-human world doesn’t lead only to amazement; it leads also to acknowledgment of pain. Open and attentive, we see and feel equally the beauty and the wounds, the old growth and the clear- cut, the mountain and the mine. Paying attention to suffering sharpens our ability to respond. To be responsible.” Through this artifact, we intend to show an approach that we can explore the ‘arts of noticing’ by encouraging physical engagement and creating sharing sensory experience. In this lens, the intertwined behaviors and senses bind the human body and nonhuman, which picture a
scenario of entangled habitation.
#2 GrowthTouch
GrowthTouch was ideated based on the fact that a plant can perform tropisms, which means it responds to environmental changes by altering the texture of stem and leaf parts and growing leaves in specific directions. One of the most common tropisms is phototropism, and it happens when plants move towards sunlight. It is such a performative, dynamic and aesthetic evidence for plants’ being in the world, yet it is also a view that humans can hardly perceive. It inspired us to “integrate a wider definition of the user in HCI as a sensing, moving, and performative body”by enabling humans to perceive the performative aspect of plants. With GrowthTouch, design for entangled habitation and the arts of noticing led to a design to simulate plants’ touch triggered by its actual movement. Through this process, humans ‘notice’ and engage with the existence of plants through the intimate touch of plants.
MotionEyeos interface
2021/07/16
Test through the MotionEyeos on Raspberry pi. 👌 (Have to connect the ethernet, still couldnt work out the wireless connection). I might still use python in original raspi os as it’s more convienient to control the output. 🤔This will be the next step.
Timelapse setup for observing the movement of Begonia.
2021/07/17
Tested through motion detection program with python 3 in Raspi. 👌Connected it with motor and successfully trigger the motor to run when a motion is detected. 👌 Set up a installation for doing a timelapse for the Begonia in my bacolny 👌 (starting from 2021/7/17/22:00, capture one image for every 15 min in 24 h). The goal is to see how fast each plant is moving within one day, so that I can choose the one that moves more obviously to make the final installation.
The Begonia turns out to be moving quite obviously during the daytime
due to the change of sunshine.
2021/07/17 Timelapse of Begonia from 6am to 7 pm. The leaf is moving according to sun’s movement.
2021/07/20
Worked out the wireless connetion. Successfully control the motor on the Arduino with motion detection on Raspi.
Wireless connection between Raspi (camera motion capture) & Arduino (motor)
2021/07/21
Finish controlling multiple motors using PCA9685. Here’s the demo:
Finish controlling multiple motors using PCA9685. Wireless connection between Raspi (camera motion capture) & Arduino (3 motors)
Designing the skin
Design sketch of the facial jewelry (left) and the breathe necklace (right).
Motion detection module setup
Testing the artefact by wearing it on the face for half day.
This artifact explored the arts of noticing by exploring the performative aspect of a plant — that how bodies may act and perform in the world. Though humans are able to notice the growth of a plant by observing the change of the leaf and the blooming of a flower, it is almost impossible for humans to perceive the constant movement of a plant body due to its tiny motion. However, we argue that the constant moving of a body is a powerful and aesthetic aspect of a living life. Within this lens, we intend to explore the more-than-human symbiote by constructing plants’ performative bodies on the human body, thus enabling humans to perceive the constant movement of a plant and gain attentiveness to the nonhuman beings. The movement of a plant, the simulated touch, the embodied performative plant body, the human body, altogether form an entangled system that transform, represent, and create multiple senses. GrowthTouch provides an approach that wearers can use their intuitive, haptic, and emotional capabilities and come to an intensive understanding of how plants are being and living in the world and decenter themselves by having more attentiveness to the nonhuman beings.
#3 Breathe Together
Figure 4: The air bag is designed to be placed on the chest of the wearer, which is the same position of human’s lung.
Carbon dioxide’s warming effects as a greenhouse gas have been recognized for a long time. However, insights into the conditions of the carbon dioxide level in the air around a plant, in which a plant conduct photosynthesis and grow, can also provide valuable information for human about how plants are responding to the environmental conditions. “Plants have a very complex and diverse influence on the climate system”. Caldeira et al. found that the way plants react to carbon dioxide is critical for accurate climate forecasting. This offered many insights for us to explore a more-than-human body in a broader sense — to improve the representation of land plants and build more-than-human body in an effort to care for ecological crisis.
BreathTogether includes two parts: carbon dioxide reading module and wearable breath simulation.
This design is based on the concept of breathing together with plants. In Figure 4, we build a breathing plant organ on human body that represents plants’ photosynthesis effectiveness, which also reveals its wellbeing and provides insights for climate system. Photosynthesis is the process through which plants take carbon dioxide from the air, mix it with water and light, and produce carbohydrates. MH-Z19B NDIR infrared gas module is a common type, small size sensor, using non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) principle to detect the existence of carbon dioxide in the air. BreathTogether is a wearable artifact that physicalizes plant’s breath with the varying size of an airbag by reading the carbon dioxide data from a plant.
Entangled Habitation for the Future
We attempt to respond to the call of ‘including a wider definition of user in HCI’by perceiving plants as stakeholder in the design interaction system. We see plants as equally sensing, performing, living objects as humans in the world and we build our design based on this argument. Motivated by what Introna stated ‘Humans and things are ‘ontologically inseparable from the start’[11], we see our built more-than-human body as a productive way for HCI to evolve in this constantly changing world. ‘Arts of noticing’ as a method and more-than-human perspective as an approach inspired us to explore the plant-human habitation, and our design research stands as an example for interpreting the theoretical literature into practices. Specifically, we introduce the design system that invites nonhuman objects as users and constructs dynamic symbiote based on humans and plants. While this paper offers one specific way of building a more-than-human body, we would welcome others to draw their own.
