Synchronized Artificial Natures: The Secret Life of Trees Connecting York, Delft and Alicante

Abstract

This paper presents an experiment that explored teaching limits in architecture and computational arts. Three universities (York, Tu-Delft and Alicante) collaborated, commissioning and producing three Interactive scenographic spaces. These were formed by visitors, artificial trees as well as reactive technologies and emulated the way in which fungi communicate by connecting their roots underground. Over the four months of duration of the experiment, students learnt about programming resources in contemporary musical scenographic creation; graphic resources and digital manufacturing for 3D printing; component design; Arduino programming; and interfaces such as the “Game of Life” to explain the project in terms of cooperating particles. Theoretical backgrounds such as the architecture of contingency, readings such as “the secret life of the trees” by Wohlleben and performance practices such as “A-volve” by Mignonneau and Sommerer or “Hylozoic series” by Philip Beesley were approached in the workshop. The ultimate goals of this teaching practice described more explicitly in the paper include: understanding the ways in which communities cooperate; synchronous communication between scenic spaces as well as transparent design processes; and efforts to reduce excessive subject learning encapsulation in new Degrees based on the Bologna model.