INTERACTIVE PLANT GROWING

"The rate of growth deserves to be studied as a necessary preliminary to the theoretical study of form, and organic form itself is found, mathematically speaking, to be a function of time. (....) We might call the form of an organism an event in space-time, and not merely a configuration in space." (D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form, Cambridge University Press, 1942.)

"Interactive Plant Growing" is an installation, which deals with the principle of growth of virtual plant organisms and their change and modification in real time in the virtual space of a 3-D Graphic Computer (Silicon Graphics). These modifications of predefined "artificially living plant organisms" are mainly based on the principle of development and evolution in time. The artificial growing of program-based plants is an expression of the desire to discover the principle of life, which is always defined by the transformations and morphogenesis of certain organisms.

Interactive Plant Growing connects the growing of virtual plants in the 3 - dimensional space of the computer to real living plants, which can be touched or approached by human viewers. By touching real plants or moving their hands towards them human viewers can influence and control directly in real - time the virtual growth of 25 and more program-based plants, which are simultaneously displayed on a videoprojectionscreen in front of them.

The movements of the viewers hands send different data values to the interface, which connects the plants and the growing program.