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Tree Drawing

Tim Knowles Tree Drawing

Attaching pens to branches of trees, Tim Knowler produces tree drawings, or rather, sets up the situation in which a tree can produce drawings. I was pleasantly reminded of his work, having come across it sometime last summer, through an email and Inhabitant.

From his artist statement,

“The exploration of Chance and Process is core to my artistic practice. Akin to scientific experimentation and investigation, the results of my projects [although operating within carefully developed controls and parameters] are unpredictable and outside my control. It is the wind, postmen, the motion of a vehicle, or players of a game that unwittingly determine the outcome.” 

I will be forever interested in the idea of chance within artwork, especially when the elements of chance are coming from nature.

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Flower Bombs With Biodegradable Plastic

Flower Bombs by StudioTX

Flower bombs made from biodegradable plastic (PLA plastic), painted with water-based chalk, created by Studio TX. The lawn gnomes images are questionable, but maybe better than paintings of flowers… As the bag begins to break down (which takes 4-6 months), the seeds land on a base of sod and begin to flower.

We should either start making some seed bombs and learn about this biodegradable plastic, ormake this.

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Plant-Reactive Robots Make Music

Plant-Reactive Robots Play Bamboo, Chinese Instruments at Royal Botanic Garden, Scotland

An installation in Palm House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland where a variety of traditional Chinese instruments and chimes are controlled robotically in response to people and plants. The sounds produced by this are incredibly beautiful, watching the video of the installationis highly recommended. Built using Arduino, the installation reacts to the presence of humans and changes in the soil of the plant beds.

Similar and equally cool—Botanicalls, an open-source project that uses sensors to determine when plants need to be watered and then automatically calls its owner to ask to be watered.

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Visualizing Pollution + Making Nature Move

Amateur Human, visualizing pollution

Visualizations have the potential to be incredibly powerful, helping us to understand issues and see potentially hidden connections between things. Bruce Sterling wrote as part of his Viridian Design Principles, that one should try to “make the invisible visible.”

Amateur Human is a group and/or single individual artist/designer who is making a variety of accessories to help to visualize and understand our energy consumption and effects thereof. The project pictured above is called Puff, and attempts to give the driver feedback on the amount of pollution coming from their tailpipe. Other projects include a fuel tracker and energy bank. Apparently these projects may also be made available as instructions to re-create them. 

Wildlife by Karolina Sobecka

The person behind this is Karolina Sobecka, and I came across her site through another link to this other project she did, called Wildlife. From her website: “At night projections from moving cars are shone on the buildings downtown. Each car projects a video of a wild animal. The animal’s movements are programmed to correspond to the speed of the car: as the car moves, the animal runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the animal stops also.”

Watch the video.

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Graffiti for Butterflies

Graffiti for Butterflies

Interesting idea using UV Spray Paint (sunblock) to draw in migrating monarch butterflies to eat some milkweed nectar on their way over major cities. The image above is a screenshot from one of the videos, the flower is the graffiti that becomes coated in sunblock and acts as a “fast-food sign on a highway” for monarchs.

I think it’s interesting to use existing materials and conditions, but to draw special attention to them. I’m not sure that this is the most effective realization of this idea, then again it’s just a prototype… 

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