Society. Spaces. Screens

Abstract

How might humanity entertain novel modalities of empathy by considering the ‘experience’ of an artificial plant? Michael Marder, a philosopher of vegetal phenomenology and ‘plant-thinking,’ argues that human empathy toward real plants is limited by anthropomorphism, as we are simply projecting our notions of experience onto them. This research-based art installation project, Fauxtanical, aims to extend Marder’s line of inquiry as to also consider the experience of non-living ‘fake’ plants in domestic spaces. Fauxtanical utilizes physiological data gathered from a real plant, an artificial plant, and a human source to allow for a collaborative interplay between human-machine, non-human, real, and faux – occupying a liminal space between the actual and the virtual. Drawing from non-representational methodologies of performatively procuring and visualizing data, this co-creative act entails a relationally emergent and chance-driven audio-visual experience mediated through cymatics, screens, and speakers. After contextualizing the project’s technical components and distinguishing it from similar research within a critical media practice, I arrive at a posthuman dialectic between Bennett, Bogost, and Braidotti. Taken alongside a reframing of indigenous notions of animism reveals Fauxtanical as a form of embodiment with the more-than-human, perhaps fostering new forms of empathy to bloom in the in-between.