Sihong Chen

Through our research, we found that when water moves through the xylem, the hollow tubes that transport water and nutrients within plants, it can create a faint hissing or gurgling sound. This sound is typically too quiet for the human ear to hear without amplification.

And the experiment has shown that the frequency of plants drinking water partly reflects the growth status of plants. The faster a plant drinks water, the healthier it grows; on the contrary, the slower it drinks water, the more it tends to die.

We used a stethoscope to listen to and record the frequency of water drinking at the roots of different plants and used software to identify frequency changes in the audio. By amplifying the signal in the sound, we can clearly hear the water flowing from the roots of the plants, almost like a real water language.

By recording the water sound from the roots of different plants to design the language between plants and water, we built a world. "Water gives birth to all things, and the great hiding place is in water." Water is the god of plants. After research, it is found that the "water language" of plant roots can help plants convey different information and store memories, which is the embodiment of plant consciousness.

Human-Centered Lab extracted the water language in different plant roots and analyzed the meanings represented by different water sound frequencies, such as growth patterns and appearance characteristics, deciphering the "secret of water language". Based on this, they created a water mantra scripture belonging to plants - “Mantra of the Water God". Human beings artificially create religious ceremonies for plants, disturbing their consciousness by playing specific frequencies of sound as a means of controlling them.

This project is inspired by the historic and problematic concept of 'freak shows'. From the Middle Ages onwards, freak shows were a popular form of entertainment. Before 1900 freak shows were the main attraction of cheap museums and human eccentricity was the king of museum entertainment. It was not until 1990, when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, that profiting from the misfortunes of others was finally considered wrong. After this, mankind turned its attention to animal shows. As human respect for and protection of animals matured, animal shows eventually fell out of favor with people's entertainment.

Inspired by the above, we imagine a worldview in which humans turn their attention to the aesthetics of the hunt for plants, and we try to design a museum of monstrous plants, controlled through the mantra of the water gods, to create a plant freak show. In this way, we hope to bring the audience into our worldview and experience nature in a new dimension after human over-interference. Ultimately, plants will become 'freak artworks' created in a carnival of human curiosity and aesthetics.

We chose to listen to plants whose appearance features resemble different human organs, including the eye-like Actaea pachypoda Misty Blue, the brain-like Brain Cactus, and the bone-like Maranta leuconeura, to impose these characteristics on different "pain plants", Create an empathetic experience for the audience.

Flytrap is the pain of being teased and unable to eat normally, rainbow succulent is the pain of being persecuted by "poison" and unable to grow healthily, the green jade vine is the pain of being pierced by nails and rope training. These deformed plants will perform a natural "tragedy" directed by humans.

Through music, installations, digital film, and scorebooks, the audience is substituted into our stories, experiencing man-made nature in a new dimension. The installation will include three different sculptures of freak plants, with plant roots filled with water and earphones hanging from the roots. The audience can take off the earphones and listen to different "Mantra of the water god" together with the plants. 

The scorebook on the music stand records the music scores corresponding to the different freak plant features. The soil is sprinkled with coins to reflect the enthusiasm for freak shows in cheap museums in the past.