Unstable Bodies

This research project is guided by the question What is it to be human? Humans have always taken measure of themselves and their environments, and architects have continued to design and materialise their ideas for human needs. However, what defines being human is now in question. Evolving algorithms and elaborate artificial intelligence software can mimic and enhance our own neurological system and interact with living environments, and as technologies acquire human capacities even non-human creatures such as plants appear more human than we thought. Research suggests that even the humble pea-plant experiences space and time in complex ways, making calculated decisions that further its well-being. If machines and plants can manifest what we would otherwise call intelligence and foresight, then perhaps humancentric notions of perception and cognition have become inadequate. With the pea plant as our companion in this research, the project will investigate vegetal modes of perceiving, even seeing and hearing, and ask if there is a central who or what that organises these sensory inputs, or if agential focus can emerge in dispersal. Using different methods from the fields of movement research, film, neuroscience, plant studies, phenomenology and computer science, the interdisciplinary project team will experimentally explore how cross-species collaboration can be aesthetically and spatially perceived as a shared sensorial space. Among other results, the project will develop a filmic essay incorporating the different sensory documentations, focusing on specific thresholds across plant and human states of being - such as sleep, wakefulness, memory - where commonalities and differences will enable further inquiry. Developing a broader appreciation of the myriad ways that perceptive attention can be configured and through modes and morphologies that are currently unfamiliar to us, does more than add differences into the mix. It also challenges humancentric assumptions about the what and where of perception and encourages a more curious approach to things we thought we knew. Not unrelated, the project will be especially concerned with inclusion and access, and special consideration will be given to the partially sighted or blind and those with restricted mobility. In the context of the projects inquiry and its aim of exploring accepted prejudices and beliefs, an audience with disability will have the opportunity to participate in the experiment, documenting what might prove strategic, inventive and unusual in their perceptive negotiations with the world.

The pea is the protagonist of an artistic-experimental research project, Unstable Bodies, a series of experiments on spatial perception and its reference systems as speculative correspondence with the vegetal. The project investigates vegetal modes of perceiving, even "seeing" and "hearing," and asks if there is a central "who" or "what" that organises these sensory inputs, or if agential focus can emerge in dispersal. In response to the synaesthetic nature of plant sensing, stereoscopic vision was applied as mode of inquiry to challenge common assumptions about perception and corporeality. To do so, the artistic-technological explorations aimed for an unsettling of preconceived points of view. The work revolves in particular around mechanisms of seeing, stereoscopic procedures and film: the viewers become part of a translational movement. The experimental short film "Revolving Rounds" which concludes the project, shows a tracking shot that tells about sites of cultivation of the pea. The recordings become part of a historical autostereoscopic, cinematographic apparatus, the Cyclostéréoscope. Enmeshed in the image-technological speculations the pea plant unfolds a sensory experiential space of looking. The filmic approach and rotation around the pea plant reaches into the chemical composition of the film strip itself and dissects the spatiality of usually invisible, imaginary in-between matter. The temporal and physical obstacles that seem to manifest themselves in the different scales between humans and plants are deconstructed using cinematic means. The search for plant signatures of being-in-the-world turns into an unexpected spatial experience of viewing; a transcalar explosion, the passage through the film grain. The construction of the autostereoscopic display, a spatial projection system, is unique in that it enables a three-dimensional moving image without polarizing glasses or other visual aids. The research team of the "Unstable Bodies" project has redesigned this autostereoscopic apparatus on the basis of the few documents available today and built several prototypes to test the principle of autostereoscopic projection and its translation into space and make it possible for an interested audience to experience it again. The reconstruction revises the orginal ideas with contemporary materials and projection techniques, including xenon arc lamps, modern projector mechanics, high resolution lenses, shift lenses to avoid distortion, and digital sound. The making and thinking through of the different apparatuses required attention to other modes of perception, connecting distinct optical system, frequencies of image production, sizes and resolution. As such, it continues to engender spaces of negotiation, bringing closer the protagonist of this research, the pea.