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--- groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-24 08:28] – maja
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 ==== From plants to stories: patabotany ====
-Designing games where humans play a plant based on a human understanding of plants can sound rather paradoxical. To take this incongruity to its extremes, groWorld devised a creative experiment which folds human interpretation of plants back on itself. Patabotany is a hybrid between ethnobotany (the study of cultural, spiritual and medical uses of plants) and pataphysics, the science of imaginary solutions (Jarry, 2001). Patabotany poses the question: what if the metaphors, cultural rituals and myths associated with plants could be discovered in their physical properties – in their shapes, colours and functions? If mushrooms were in fact aliens attempting to communicate with us, what organs could mushrooms and humans grow to improve reciprocal communication? If red roses were able not just to symbolise love, but write love letters through chemotropism, guided by lovers’ pheromones? If the soil purifying plant could in fact turn heavy metals into precious rings? Patabotany is a cross-pollination between myth and reality: it is an interpretation of interpretation, an abstraction of abstraction, emerging at the edges of poetry, magic and biology. Patabotany subverts the contemporary drive to instrumentalise culture and nature in economic or utilitarian constructs. It describes a world where the believable is grafted onto the improbable, where logic is pollinated with a hybrid of sensuality and paradox, where botany and permaculture mutate into an epic of nurturing and seduction in relentless cycles of living and dying.
+Designing games where humans play a plant based on a human understanding of plants can sound rather paradoxical. To take this incongruity to its extremes, groWorld folds human interpretation of plants back on itself in a creative experiment named patabotany. Patabotany is a hybrid between ethnobotany (the study of cultural, spiritual and medical uses of plants) and pataphysics, the science of imaginary solutions (Jarry, 2001). Patabotany poses the question: what if the metaphors, cultural rituals and myths associated with plants could be discovered in their physical properties – in their shapes, colours and functions? If mushrooms were in fact aliens attempting to communicate with us, what organs could mushrooms and humans grow to improve reciprocal communication? If red roses were able not just to symbolise love, but write love letters through chemotropism, guided by lovers’ pheromones? If the soil purifying plant could in fact turn heavy metals into precious rings? Patabotany is a cross-pollination between myth and reality: it is an interpretation of interpretation, an abstraction of abstraction, emerging at the edges of poetry, magic and biology. Patabotany subverts the contemporary drive to instrumentalise culture and nature in economic or utilitarian constructs. It describes a world where the believable is grafted onto the improbable, where logic is pollinated with a hybrid of sensuality and paradox, where botany and permaculture mutate into an epic of nurturing and seduction in relentless cycles of living and dying.
-In groWorld patabotany was grafted onto tarot, a known storytelling and divination platform with its roots in card games and magic of italian Rennaissance. FoAM cross-breed tarot archetypes and ethnobotanical properties of plants - as the adventurous fool or the mysterious high priestess with patabotanically evolved Morning Glory and Lady's Mantle. Some of the chosen plants share history, morphology or geography with the human archetypes,  others are able to induce archetypal body- and mindstates or inhabit the same pata-ecology. Patabotanical tarot builds on a peculiar and mysterious history of plant books, which includes such curiosities as The Voynich Manuscript (Kennedy 2005, Voynich, Retreived 2011), Parallel Botany (Lionni 1978), Codex Seraphinianus (Serafini 1981) and Tolkien’s plants of Middle Earth (Hazell 2007). The Voynich Manuscript, for example, allegedly written in the 15th or 16th century, contains hundreds of herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological and pharmaceutical drawings and recipes. The manuscript is not written in any known language, and has resisted all attempts at translation; many believe it is a hoax. The plants detailed in this strange manuscript do not match any known species. In a way, the Voynich Manuscript represents a “secret knowledge” of a possibly fictional, possibly alchemical universe, and as such it has engaged and fascinated scholars for hundreds of years. Parallel Botany, a more recent example by a known author, is a collection of faux scientific descriptions of plants, backed by invented mythologies and folktales from around the globe. Parallel plants have the ability to defy perspective, exist as music, or evaporate when touched. There is so much that we don’t know about our vegetal neighbours that even the most scientifically-minded among us have been unsure how much of this work is fact and how much fiction. Patabotany is a similarly entangled milieu, where botanical truths are questioned through juxtapositions with traditional myths and popular beliefs, interspersed with personal dreams and collective speculations.
+In groWorld patabotany was grafted onto tarot, a known storytelling and divination platform with its roots in card games and magic of italian Rennaissance. FoAM cross-breed tarot archetypes and ethnobotanical properties of plants - as the adventurous fool or the mysterious high priestess with patabotanically evolved Morning Glory and Lady's Mantle. Some of the chosen plants share history, morphology or geography with the human archetypes, others are able to induce archetypal body- and mind states or inhabit the same pata-ecology. Patabotanical tarot builds on a peculiar and mysterious history of plant books, which includes such curiosities as The Voynich Manuscript (Kennedy 2005, Voynich, Retreived 2011), Parallel Botany (Lionni 1978), Codex Seraphinianus (Serafini 1981) and Tolkien’s plants of Middle Earth (Hazell 2007). The Voynich Manuscript, for example, allegedly written in the 15th or 16th century, contains hundreds of herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological and pharmaceutical drawings and recipes. The manuscript is not written in any known language, and has resisted all attempts at translation; many believe it is a hoax. The plants detailed in this strange manuscript do not match any known species. In a way, the Voynich Manuscript represents a “secret knowledge” of a possibly fictional, possibly alchemical universe, and as such it has engaged and fascinated scholars for hundreds of years. Parallel Botany, a more recent example by a known author, is a collection of faux scientific descriptions of plants, backed by invented mythologies and folktales from around the globe. Parallel plants have the ability to defy perspective, exist as music, or evaporate when touched. There is so much that we don’t know about our vegetal neighbours that even the most scientifically-minded among us have been unsure how much of this work is fact and how much fiction. Patabotany is a similarly entangled milieu, where botanical truths are questioned through juxtapositions with traditional myths and popular beliefs, interspersed with personal dreams and collective speculations.
-If patabotany can inject stories and other products of human imagination into botany, could it not also inspire the development of a vegetal mind in humans? What would happen were patabotany to seep back into the reality of everyday life? What if patabotany could sprout through email clients and cracks in pavements? People would encounter it online, through games and apps, and in the real world – in gardens, parks and quiet green patches by the side of the road. By straddling the online and offline world, the realms of gamers and of gardeners, patabotany could engage people in an immersive story and reinvigorate the relationship between people and plants. Attempting to infuse physical spaces with patabotany, a group of people at FoAM created Borrowed Scenery, a story about an alternate reality (past, future or parallel) where plants are a central aspect of human society. Borrowed Scenery encourages us to see urban plant life with fresh eyes and re-imagine our cities as places of sinuous interaction between humans and plants: where plants don’t just provide us with food and materials but become neighbours, teachers, and gateways to the "planetary Other". Borrowed Scenery is an alternate reality narrative about the dissolution of borders between reality and fiction, mysticism and technology, nature and culture. It is a story that wants to become reality. By 'borrowing' the setting of everyday life in the city, it attempts to infuse our habitual activities, such as walking or eating, with a vision of a possible future where insatiable economic growth is superseded by an atmosphere-based economy, where nature has a voice. In Borrowed Scenery we can viscerally experience ourselves as inseparable from the world, with our feet connected to tangles of mycelium, roots and soil.
+If patabotany can inject stories and other products of human imagination into botany, could it not also inspire the development of a "vegetal mind" in humans? What would happen were patabotany to seep back into the reality of everyday life? What if patabotany could sprout through email clients and cracks in pavements? People would encounter it online, through games and apps, and in the real world – in gardens, parks and green patches by the side of the road. By straddling the online and offline world, the realms of gamers and of gardeners, patabotany could engage people in an immersive story and reinvigorate the relationship between people and plants.
+Attempting to infuse physical spaces with patabotany, a group of people at FoAM created Borrowed Scenery, a story about an alternate reality (past, future or parallel) where plants are a central aspect of human society. Borrowed Scenery encourages us to re-imagine our cities as places of sinuous interaction between humans and plants: where plants don’t just provide us with food and materials but become neighbours, teachers, and gateways to the "planetary Other". Borrowed Scenery is an alternate reality narrative about the dissolution of borders between reality and fiction, mysticism and technology, nature and culture. It is a story that wants to become reality. Its characters - a team of patabotanists attempting to re-establish human-plant communication - are evolved tarot-plant hybrids, as well as living humans. They leave physical traces, such as notebooks, used teacups and experiments-in-progress. Their words appear in online forums, on Open Street Maps, in a game and a wiki. They speak various plant languages as well as Hildegard von Bingen's Lingua Ignota. The patabotanists remain elusive and always just out of grasp - they have just left on a field trip or are about to wake up. Yet their lab and their arcane equipment, collected specimen and a peculiar library is always open to curious passers by. In a hidden indoor jungle, people can discover the patabotanists' world, meet their research assistants, get involved in ongoing experiments, or sip a cup of herbal tea in their dandyist lounge. From this HQ their work spills out onto the streets, to map remarkable plants and gardens, seeking out plants, people and places with most porous edges between the human and the vegetal. By 'borrowing' the setting of everyday life in the city, it attempts to infuse our habitual activities, such as walking or eating, with a vision of a possible future where insatiable economic growth is superseded by an atmosphere-based economy, where nature has a voice. A voice that we can hear in the weather, in software communication protocols and in our own thoughts. In Borrowed Scenery we can viscerally experience ourselves as inseparable from the world, with our feet connected to tangles of mycelium, roots and soil, while our awareness mingles with the vegetal, animal and elemental.
 “If the light is sufficient to disclose to us the way of contemplation that lies within ourselves, we may by pursuing it to the end. We may know – not as a mere static dictum but as a winged intuition, carrying an infinitude of significance both for mind and heart – that the One IS the Manifold, and the Manifold IS the One.”
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   * Wright, J. A “Blessing.” Retrieved on 10 November 2007 from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-blessing/
-=== groWorld's allies ===
+=== groWorld's kindred people and places ===
   * Borrowed Scenery: http://borrowed-scenery.net