Breath of Flowers2022
Material: flowers, oxygen mask, acrylic, paper, organza, arduino
Video:
https://vimeo.com/700849394
"When I engage you, could you hear, I am calling your name."
"Breathe together and listen to the whispers."
“I can feel your breathing”
Regenerative Organs aims to use a 'post-human' concept to think about and explore the symbiosis and close connection between humans and plants. The Regenerative Organ is a wearable apparel device based on plants. More specifically, Regenerative Organs translates data on the efficiency of light and action of plants into acoustic changes through an external organ built from wearable technology - the 'regenerative lung' - to physically depict the interaction between plants and humans under symbiotic breathing. By constructing non-human organs on the human body, I hope to give a new meaning to the integration of plants and humans - a body that is accessible to perception, movement and performable. The design of this installation, which allows humans to interact with plants in real time, allows humans to feel more deeply the presence of plants and their impact on the earth and ecology, and to establish an entangled symbiosis between plants and the human body. And such a symbiosis can influence human cognitive understanding of the central role of plants in the ecosystem, increasing human awareness of the community of destiny and environmental change.
This project is a combination of costume design, installation design and experimental music and experimental visuals. The reason for so many outputs is that I wanted to bring the project to a higher level of completeness and richness. At the beginning I didn't want to do the experimental visual part, but when the music was finished it made me think that only the music part was not enough for this project, so the visual was added at a later stage.
This project was partly inspired by the Japanese caricature, Blade of Demise, which talks about different breathing techniques such as Breath of Water, Breath of the Sun, Breath of the Moon, Breath of the Butterfly, etc. I really liked this caricature and was interested in the breathing techniques created in it, which led me to think about this project.
Using arduino esp32, STM32, MQ-135, data is generated by detecting CO2 components as well as ethanol gas detection and air quality and harmful gas detection, which is divided into two entrances and transmitted to MAX via OSC, which is then controlled and influenced separately using the data detected in real time with the different three parts of MAX. The data from the OSC is also transferred to OPENFRAMEWORKS via the OSC to control the pixel values in the captured flower video and to modify some of the pixel values. This requires two computers to control for stability and the end effect is to control the music and visual interaction with the detection of breath data. As the esp32 has good signalling capabilities, the esp32 can transmit signals as long as the wifi is fed into the arduino and compiled for it. However, if you change the environment, you will need to change the wifi name and password in the arduino and re-upload it to the esp32. STM32 is used to detect CO2 emissions when breathing is combined with flowers. the gas sensitive material used in the MQ-135 gas sensor is tin dioxide (SnO2), which has a low conductivity in clean air. When the sensor is in an environment where contaminating gases are present, the conductivity of the sensor increases with the concentration of contaminating gases in the air. Using a simple circuit, the change in conductivity can be converted into an output signal that corresponds to the concentration of the gas.
The fabrics for the dresses were cut and reconstructed from my paintings, combining my understanding of nature and life. During this time I developed an extreme desire to love and protect natural life. The disregard and destruction of natural life by humans in real time events that I found, as well as images of things that happened in my own life that I did not want to talk about, that I did not want to remember, made me think dialectically and question human nature. During this time I developed a distaste for humanity, but as a human being myself, I am also created by humans and I have a loving human role, so this left me conflicted and confused and I had a lot of helplessness and impotence. At this stage I have been thinking about what is the right idea, but sometimes it is difficult to get answers to questions such as, what is the meaning of life? Now I understand that I think it is reproduction, because it takes the next generation and generations to rethink and recreate. In this process I try to step out of my circle of thinking and take a third perspective on self-reflection, I feel that sometimes the inability to understand something can be considered an ending, so I give vent to my feelings and confusion in my paintings. By cutting the paintings into a total of thirteen sheets and then weaving and collaging them together, using the technique of flower arranging to fill in the gaps.
