Living-with and Designing-with Plants

Abstract

D four 30 x 30 cm 110-watt full-spectrum and infrared LED grow lights (for the interior balcony plant walls); and three 100 cm 300-watt full-spectrum and infrared dimmable LED grow lights mounted vertically with an aluminum support (for the living room and the bedroom). The system is complemented by a WiFi-enabled programmable humidifier (for the interior balcony) and a WiFi-enabled smart watering system, including a light and humidity sensor (for the terrace). We see this as first-person research [4] into a posthuman design [5] exploration of cohabitation in a multispecies context. Cohabitation remains the goal and the way to rethink how we live with other living things—for example, plants—and coshape “our” personal everyday behaviors and private space accordingly [5]. The following draws on the formats of diaries, first-person vignettes [6], and field notes. Through this we focus on the first stages of the process of designing-with/living-with through cohabitation: setting During the past five years, the first author has been transforming his home—a flat in the city center—into the place he wants to live [1]: an entanglement of technologies, plants, humans, and others; a place where plants and humans can coexist, inhabit, and coshape the space they share [2,3]. At the moment, the human, nonhuman, living, and technological actors involved consist of up to 250 plants, the physical infrastructure and adapted furniture for the plants to live in, the IoT infrastructure for the plants (assemblage of smart lighting, humidity, and watering systems), furniture and decorative art pieces for humans, a human or two living there, and the occasional guest. To achieve this, off-the-shelf technologies were hacked and combined to create a programmable IoT system: eleven interior water irrigation systems with a one-minute automated electric pump and a nine-liter water container each; three sets of six 50 cm linear modules with 10-watt full-spectrum LED grow lights (for the studio plant wall);