Fern Orchestra’s Plants at Work exhibition challenges perceptions of plants as passive and static nonentities, playing with the concept of the economically important plants. What do plants produce and for whom?

In many ways, plants are vital for the survival of humanity. Vegetation makes up 99.97% of the Earth’s biomass.  We are not separate from nature, but part of it. The works in this exhibition present new perspectives and ways to pursue planetary well-being. It is the sum of all living things.

Plants at Work presents plants as active cultural workers who collaborate with the human artists in the collective. Sensors attached to the plants measure their vital functions and, using technology built by the group, the measurements are transformed into light, sound and drawing.  What is a potato and tomato disco like? What does a portrait drawn by a chili look like?

Science and art collective Fern Orchstra’s light and sound works and installations have previously explored topics such as photosynthesis, the closed biosphere and plant senses. Plants at Work is the thirteenth in the series. Through the works, we imagine other realities and reach across the chasm of otherness towards interspecies love.

Working Group