Vol. 1 No. 2 (2024): Networks of Plants and the Language of Resonance in Science and Literature
Research Articles

Becoming Media: Elements of a Media History of Plants

PDF HTML
  • Birgit Schneider
Birgit Schneider
University of Potsdam
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63845494909735

Published 2024-10-17

Keywords

  • Media Theory,
  • Information Theory,
  • Plant Cognition,
  • Sonification,
  • Communication,
  • Media Art,
  • Listening
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Schneider, Birgit. 2024. “Becoming Media: Elements of a Media History of Plants”. Plant Perspectives 1 (2):293-312. https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63845494909735.

Copyright (c) 2024 Birgit Schneider

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Plants communicate with their fellow species, but also with other species. The communication of humans with plants, in turn, represents an old phantasm that is intended to lead to contact with the seemingly mute creatures. This article revisits the history of plant cognition from a media theory perspective. The article questions the extent to which media and electricity have historically been and are currently leitmotifs for entering into resonance with plants. The focus is on media-historical and science-historical approaches that have conferred to plants the ability to communicate and on current sensor interfaces through which plants are turned into sound in media art. The article argues that, whenever media technology makes plants ‘speak’, what the human listener actually hears is the medium, not the plant, because it is a human construct.

PDF HTML

References

  1. Baluška, František, Stefano Mancuso and Dieter Volkmann (eds). 2006. Communication in Plants. Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28516-4
  2. Castro, T. 2019. ‘The mediated plant’. e-flux-Journal 102: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/283819/the-mediated-plant/ (accessed 10 November 2023).
  3. Castro, T. 2020. ‘The 1970s plant craze’, Antennae. The Journal of Art and Nature 52.
  4. Chamowitz, D. 2012. What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses. New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  5. Darwin, C. 1875. Insectivorous Plants. London: John Murray. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.99933
  6. Darwin, C. 1880. The Power of Movement in Plants. London: John Murray. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.102319
  7. Das, S. 2023. Bagadish Chandra Bose: The Reluctant Physicist. New-Delhi: Niyogi Books.
  8. Gagliano, M. 2018. Thus Spoke the Plant. A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
  9. Kuni, V. 2020. ‘The plants are (watching) sensing’. In B. Schneider and E. Zemanek (eds). Spürtechniken. Von der Wahrnehmung der Natur zur Natur als Medium (Special Issue). Medienobservationen: https://www.medienobservationen.de/pdf/20200430Kuni6.pdf (accessed 10 November 2023).
  10. Kimmerer, R. W. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.
  11. LaFrance, A. 2015. ‘When you give a tree an email address’. The Atlantic (10 July): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/when-you-give-a-tree-an-email-address/398210/ (accessed September 2023)
  12. Mancuso, S. and A. Viola 2015. Die Intelligenz der Pflanzen. München: Kunstmann. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0415-6412(16)30020-0
  13. Marder, M. 2013. Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. New York: Columbia University Press.
  14. Marey, É. J. 1878. La méthode graphique dans les sciences expérimentales et principalement en physiologie et en médecine. Paris: G. Masson.
  15. Rieger, S. and B. Bühler 2009. Das Wuchern der Pflanzen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
  16. Robinson, D. 2022. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis/Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
  17. Rosa, H. 2021. Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. Trans. James Wagner. Cambridge: Polity.
  18. Schneider, B. 2018. ‘Neue Formen der Klimakrisenwahrnehmung? Sprechende Bäume im Netz der Dritten Natur’. Dritte Natur. Technik Kapital Umwelt 1: 40–53.
  19. Shannon, Claude E. 1949. ‘Communication Theory of Secret Systems’. In Bell Systems Technical Journal 28: 656–715. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1949.tb00928.x
  20. Tompkins, P. and C. Bird 1973. The Secret Life of Plants. New York: Harper & Row.
  21. Trewavas, A. 2003. ‘Aspects of plant intelligence’. Annals of Botany 92 (1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcg101
  22. Vakoch, D.A. and J. Punske (eds). 2024. Xenolinguistics Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language. New York: Routledge.
  23. Vogl, J. 2001. ‘Medien-Werden. Galileos Fernrohr’. Archiv für Mediengeschichte 1: 115–23.
  24. Volkart, Y. 2023. Technologies of Care. From Sensing Technologies to an Aesthetics of Attention in a More-than-human World. Berlin: diaphanes. https://doi.org/10.4472/9783035804461
  25. Wankhammer, J. 2017. ‘Anthropomorphism, trope, and the hidden life of trees: On Peter Wohlleben’s rhetoric’. Literatur für Leser 2: 139–51. https://doi.org/10.3726/LFL022017k_139
  26. Wiener, N. 1985. Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
  27. Wildon, D.C. et al. 1992. ‘Electrical signaling and systemic proteinase inhibitor induction in the wounded plant’. Nature 360: 62–65. https://doi.org/10.1038/360062a0