Entrepreneur

Kasia Molga, World Wilder Lab

Academic Partner

Cyril Shing, Chelsea College of Arts, University of Arts London

Project Title

PlanEt – Can data from plants help us to increase our city resilience?

Project Description

PlanEt is a digital device designed for the collection and visualisation of biological data emitted from plants via streams of electrical signals. Plants have incredible sensory properties and therefore can be utilised as environmental sensors. The project has been developed under a Creative Commons License with construction and Arduino sketches available from Github.

For their residency with Chelsea College of Arts the World Wilder Lab set out to create a ‘plug in and play’ version of PlanEt, a portable toolkit that would additionally facilitate data sharing, collective digital mapping and the transmission of environmental data. To achieve this they worked with Cyril Shing and his students from BA Interior and Spatial Design, placing PlanEt at the centre of the course curriculum, conducting research by teaching.

The collaboration spent time creating communication visuals, designing a general user interface for biodata streaming and building the architecture of an online portable. Elements of the product were tested and workshopped in London and Rotterdam and whilst a working ‘plug in and play’ version of PlanEt has not been realised collaboration is continuing.

In addition to their main objective the collaboration had other major successes. The project won the second prize at the Network for Innovation and Creativity Europe and was exhibited in Johannesburg as part of a British Council art residency with the University of Witwatersrand. They have also presented at a CCW Digital Techs conference, the European Parliament, the Ford Event and the Inside Out Festival 2015.