HOW TREES COMMUNICATE

#transmediacompote WORKSHOP

• “a slightly mad play and share session”

• Tree data, media and jam

• Paper, pens, brushes, scissors, spoons & whisks

• Vinegar, ferrous oxide, gum, egg whites & gin

• Bread, cream & custard

THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS

• “Understanding how plants perceive their circumstances and respond to

environmental input in an integrated fashion”

• The writings of plant neurobiologists suffer from “over-interpretations of data,

teleology, anthropomorphising, philisophising and wild speculations”

• “the last confrontation between the scientific community and the nuthouse”

– Clifford Slayman, professor of cellular and molecular physiology, Yale

THE SESSILE LIFESTYLE

• A great many mindless individuals organised into a network

• Distributed computing and swarm behaviour

• “If you are a plant, having a brain is not an advantage”

– Stefano Mancuso, International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology, University of Florence

WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH MY TREE?

It's spring. The crab apple and the cherry blossom are sherbeting into life. The velveteen magnolia pods are splitting open to reveal a peep of pink. And my fruit tree is looking at me in a funny way.       I paid a stoner called Tristram to prune all my trees back in September and I felt he'd done a good job. He seemed like the kind of hippy who might have a 'feel' for how best to mutilate a tree, even if he was doing it through the mystic fug of sensimilia. He told me he was getting his shit together because his partner was 7-months pregnant and he wanted to take his responsibilities as a dad seriously. I think this meant he wasn't going to forget to invoice me like the last time he'd been round. He didn't even remember having been at my house before.

Anyway, the fruit tree has clearly not enjoyed its haircut by Tristram the father-to-be. I'd guess that pretty much every son of a certain age has a story about being taken to the barbers by dad and it never ends well - babyish curls reduced to a bowl cut, the rebellious teen fringe shawn away, grunge bedhead replaced by short back and sides.So maybe the tree is sulking, refusing to blossom, raising its rough stumps in protest towards me; ruining the view, despoiling my quiet washing-up time, that calm 15 minutes when I slop the suds over pots and pans, screen out the wharbling radio and pretend to be lost in a world of good intentions, a world of projects I will deliver - oh the words I will write, the great works I will lend my name to.

But now I have the tree looking back at me through the window. Not sulkily really, but definitely pregnant with some kind of emotion, like it has something to say to me, some accusation to make or a secret to share. The tree is trying to tell me something.

EXERCISE 1: WORD SEARCH

• Print out a picture of tree that has a shape which calls to you

• With a thick marker pen, draw over parts of the branches and

twigs of the tree that are making shapes which call to you (not

the whole tree!)

• Reverse your paper and with the same pen, re-inforce the

shapes that have bled into the paper

•Use the resulting lines and shapes to

create short sequence of runes,

hieroglyphics or letters

•Generate words or phrases from the

sequence

EXERCISE 2: INK

• Basic mix: mix jam with vinegar, strain, and add a pinch of salt

• More advanced mix: jam and gin strained, add a pinch of ferrous oxide and gum arabic (or dry egg white)

• Warning: this will stain!• Feel inspired: draw, paint or write something

with your damson ink

TREE SOUNDS

• “plants can not only "smell" the chemicals and "see" the reflected light of their neighbors, they may also "listen" to the plants around them.”

- Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Western Australia.

ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENON

• apophenia(finding significance in insignificant phenomena)

• auditory pareidolia(interpreting random sounds as voices in one's own language)

• hoaxes

EXERCISE 3: TREE DATA

• Storing secrets in a tree: find a particular set of data that can be replicated every year based on environmental conditions (i.e the size & chemical composition of the fruit)

• Glanceable media – build an ‘app’ for monitoring the needs (and feelings) of the tree

• Use the data to calculate & predict optimal conditions for the tree and fend off dangers

http://www.botanicalls.com/archived_kits/twitter/

SENSORS THAT TWEET

GLANCEABLE MEDIA

CALCULATIONS

VAPOUR PRESSURE DEFICITVPD = vp sat – vp air

EXERCISE 4: JAM

• Edible media and the biochemical web• Making fools & consuming the jam• How behaviours might be modified by diet• How is sociability, aggression, risk, happiness,

tension, reaction times etc affected by biochemisty & parasites?

• PLEASE COMPLETE THE SURVEY

MAKING FOOL

• Whip cream

• Fold 1 part custard into 1 part cream

• Swirl in compote to taste

• Eat!

• PLEASE COMPLETE THE SURVEY

• “acacias nibbled by antelope produce leaf tannin in quantities lethal to the browsers, and emit ethylene into the air which can travel up to 50 yards. The ethylene warns other trees of the impending danger, which then step up their own production of leaf tannin within just five to ten minutes.”

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

PARASITES• T. gondii has been shown to alter the behavior of infected rodents in

ways thought to increase the rodents' chances of being preyed upon by cats

• In the United States, almost one in four residents over the age of 12 has the infection. In other parts of the world, rates are as high as 95 percent. An unlucky minority of these infected people become quite ill. Most, however, don’t even know that their muscles and brains carry the parasite.

• What exactly T. gondii is doing while it lurks in so many people is an important question for public health. It’s also an alluringly spooky question. “Where science meets science fiction” is how Michael Dickinson of the University of Washington in Seattle describes studies of parasites that hack into their hosts’ nervous systems. The Journal of Experimental Biology, where Dickinson serves as an editor, dedicated its Jan. 1 issue to this emerging field, dubbed “neuroparasitology.” In those pages and elsewhere, clues to T. gondii’s bizarre biology are emerging. And growing evidence suggests that the hidden parasite may have visible effects.

• Studies comparing the infected and the noninfected raise the possibility that the parasite tweaks a person’s personality or ups the risk of suicide attempts, brain cancer and schizophrenia. Studies in people even report links between T. gondii and traffic accidents, greater odds of having sons than daughters, extra height and unusual opinions about the smell of urine.

DOPAMINE, CORTISOL, SERATONIN

• Complex interactions between the nervous system, hormonal pathways, and immune system are at play when it comes to overeating. In fact, it’s not just overeating. Can’t put your blackberry down? Feel bored when you’re not at work? Late-night binge behavior? Believe it or not, all these things have a lot to do with dopamine – the neurotransmitter that’s heavily involved in the pleasure centre within the brain. It’s released in high amounts during gratifying activities such as eating, sex, exercise, dancing and other enjoyable experiences. and serotonin friendly foods -

http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/dopamine-diet

• The shikimate pathway is a seven step metabolic route used by bacteria, fungi, algae, parasites and plants for the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids (phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan). This pathway is not found in animals, hence the products of this pathway represent essential amino acids that must be obtained from the animal's diet.

THE BIG QUESTIONS

• Are there secrets buried in the tree data?

• What’s the relationship between the final fruit state and the jam you make from it?

• What is the relationship of tree data to fruit chemistry to jam chemisty to biochemical triggers happening inside the body after digestion?

• Is the tree changing the way you feel?

Moisture + canopy + sound + leaf colour = ?????