Vegetal Studies

Dear TMLabbers,

Hurrah for this fresh sprout!

I’d like to point to people who played key roles in earlier generations of plant studies

(this is incomplete — I’m missing at least one

Flower Lunn

Tim Sutton

Josée-Anne Drolet

Katie Jung

Michal Seta

Jane Tingley

Tobias Glidden

Laura Boyd-Clowes

Morgan Sutherland

Carina (Gaspar?)

Alex Gaskin

Nina Bouchard

I’d like to especially recognize the people who actually cared for the plants continuously over the months and years, treating them as living beings rather than objects, with whom there developed a continuous dynamically constituting material relation.   These few people gave the work some ethical credibility.  (Thank you.)  Starting with Flower’s art during her MFA, Josee-Anne nursed 8 generations plant to seed, which gave us some diachronic as well as technical credibility.    After Flower, Laura Boyd-Clowes probably has gone the furthest of us all in her practice and her thinking about vegetal experience, ranging from her leadership in our Spinoza seminar, the reading of Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants (1790), to her Philosophy senior thesis, and now her MSc. graduate studies in ethnobotany at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

I also point to our friend and partner : Prof. Natasha Myers, and her grad students in the Plant Studies Collaboratory at York University.   TML and PSC have exchanged ambassadors : Morgan Sutherland and Laura ours :)

With affection and esteem,

Xin Wei

http://vegetal.posthaven.com

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Sha Xin Wei, Ph.D. ( calendar )

Professor and Director • School of Arts, Media and Engineering • Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts / Director • Synthesis Center / ASU

Founding Director, Topological Media Lab / topologicalmedialab.net/  /  skype: shaxinwei / +1-650-815-9962

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On Mar 19, 2014, at 10:50 AM, topological media <topologicalmedia@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

Following last weeks' campfire, were the PLANTS research arose a great interest, we explored some external venues for growing our plants and came to the conclusion it is better for us and them to co-habite in the TML lab (at least before September). Therefore, we will need to design and build a platform for "growing vegetal life forms in the lab along with a technological apparatus for sensing, recording and re-manifesting vegetal activities/forces" (Navid).

Since many of us are interested in the project and there is plenty to do, we decided to create several working-research groups to handle the different immediate practical tasks. We are also interested in organizing discussions with past and future TML affiliates who have experience or interest in the project. The meetings and presentations will be organized by TML, through Nina and Lauren, in a collaboration with the ASU Synthesis Center research with the theme PLACE and ATMOSPHERE, directed by Xin Wei.

The first working research groups will take place in the following days:

Wednesday March 19th, 12-1pm TML lab

first meeting of the GROWING & GROOMING team.

Thursday March 20th, 12-2pm TML lab

first meeting of the SENSING team.

Monday morning March 24nd, TBD, Jean-Talon Market

G&G field trip.

The general meeting of the PLANTS research group, including all working groups was fixed for Tuesdays 3:30-4:00pm (just before campfire, but not during campfire :). Modifications to this schedule will be announced if needed.

Some of you already manifested your choice for a specific working-research group (Lauren, Nina, Elysha, Navid and Oana for G&G; Navid, Julian and Oana for SENSING), but those who didn't please join and let us include you in the group closer to your interest.  

hope to see you all soon,

Oana

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