Over twenty years ago, biology educators coined the term ‘plant blindness’ to describe people’s inability to recognise and even notice plants in their environment. They argued that plant blindness causes people to underestimate the aesthetic and ecological importance of plants, which are often viewed as inferior to, and certainly less interesting than, animals. This issue is still prevalent, as other biologists and educators have recently pointed to the continuing need to replace outdated narratives that render plants as passive organisms while integrating modern scientific discoveries on plant behaviours and sensory systems. It was also emphasised that if we are to develop solutions to the urgent environmental crisis, it is essential that we position plants at the centre of the sustainability debate, overcoming human insensitivity to plants. It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green seeks to do just that by challenging and restructuring how we engage with plants.
It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green aims to investigate artistic strategies that address the plant blindness issue and promote sensory and perceptual awareness of plants through artistic interventions. It ultimately strives to transform our perception of plants and thus the ways in which we engage with plant life. For these purposes, the project will conduct a series of artistic explorations that focus on three aspects of plant-human interaction: 1) Sensing plants – how humans perceive plants through sensory systems; 2) Understanding ‘plantness’ – how plants sense and respond to their human-centred environments and 3) Green conversations – how human societies and individuals perceive plants with respect to ethical and legal concerns. Part one, ‘Sensing plants’, will study experts who have particular ways of sensing plants (e.g., through sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch). It will focus on participant observations of those experts and how they approach plants using time-based media and experiment with cross-sensory settings. Part two, ‘Understanding plantness’, will examine plant sensory systems and reactions by conducting art-science experiments in plant laboratories, such as measuring plant stressors in urban environments and capturing plant bioacoustics. This part will explore the ability of plants to respond to their surroundings, encompassing artistic observation and media as well as scientific knowledge and technology. Part three, ‘Green conversations’, will analyse the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology’s decision-making process regarding plant policy. Field research on the aftermath of Swiss plant policy will be undertaken at Switzerland’s various botanical and historical gardens. These research elements will lead to reflective writings on the intersection of art and law, including fictional court cases and debate scripts. By combining the research outcomes of these three aspects, the PhD project will create a transformative environment around human perceptions of plants linked to public urban spaces or devices, which will be further developed based on the research findings. This study is expected to provide diverse sensory approaches to plant life and contribute to proposing an integrated discourse on the issue of human perception neglecting plants compared to other living beings.