Urban Integration of Plants and Technology

This thesis investigates the process of integrating plants seamlessly into our modern urban code/space(Kitchin & Dodge, 2007). Firstly, I explore how humans interact with our own physical space and how this correlates to our digital space. These factors set the groundwork for an exploration of the possibilities of integrating additional entities currently perceived as external to our urban landscape, such as plants, into the posthuman future imagined by Katherine Hayles(1999) and Donna Haraway (1991). By viewing plant intelligence as data, we can begin to draw parallels between the behaviour of our existing technology and plant behaviour. The examination of plant consciousness as vastly different from our own outlines the difficulties in this data exchange. However, by analyzing the similarities that already exist between plants and current technology, we can see how an exchange is already occurring in our code/space. Our coevolutionary past helps contextualize this integration, and facilitates the exploration of past human/plant information transfer. My exhibit explores the mimesis (Adorno, 1997) of technology to plants’ reactive intelligence. This illustrates humanity’s influence on plants, and the unused space in our urban environment they could inhabit. This paper and accompanying exhibit proposes a future where plants and technology coexist, where our coevolutionary pattern continues as an integral part of a propose posthuman future