Monoculture
Using biodata recordings taken from palm oil plantations and presenting them against the live playback of biodata taken from a selection of plants, we posit that biodiversity hotspots and industrial agriculture belong to us all, they are a shared commons.
In the living exhibit, we engage our audience to affect sensors that trigger light and water changes, tune into the living exhibit’s bioelectrical responses, and ask them to speculate how personal agency affects the role of the Commons.
Feeding the future will be a momentous task. In the age of the anthropocene, ecological literacy will play a more important role than ever before and better knowledge of sustainable food production practices will be central to this. Technological innovations aimed at understanding electrical signaling and the vital signs of plants may lead to optimization of environmental conditions and provide early warning of stress, disease or pest attack in plants. Alongside scalable hydroponics and new trends towards agroecology; ecological grazing, agroforestry, food forestry, biodynamics, permaculture, cropping with biological inputs, there may be hope.
