Koishi

Background

We interact with one another daily, we interact with animals, and we spend hours playing Clash Royale on our smartphones; interacting with electronics. Can you see where this is going? Nowadays, it's considered normal to spend hours interacting with a piece of plastic, but interacting with a plant is probably considered as being weird.

“We evolved in a tropical climate where the smells of plants and flowers were all around us.”

— Helen Fisher

The root of the problem

It all really boils down to feedback, or rather the lack of feedback we get from plants. This skews the perception we have towards them. We all have busy lives, so we often forget to give water and care for our plants as required. That probably is one of the reasons why recently, succulents gained the popularity they now hold. Succulents are very low maintenance. But that's not the solution. Many other plant species are safer child and pet-friendly.

We often see plants as static, decorative objects, because they are static, decorative objects. But they're more. They are living beings.

High-level solution

This project aims to alter our perception of plants. Changes in plants occur slowly, what if we can somehow extract and communicate those changes? After some brainstorming sessions and talking to countless people, I figured this would only be achieved if I manage to build a mechanism that can show the plant's activity in real-time.

But code and engineering are not exactly my area of expertise. This is when I teamed up with Duncan Bonnici, a friend and a really good engineer, who took interest in the project and decided to help me out.

Investigation

Back in 2011, during one of the many nights we spent working on this, we found out that when a small, harmless electric current is passed through one end of the plant to another, the plant acted as a variable resistor. The bigger the gap between the ends, the bigger the variance in the resistance. This was very interesting, as when we connected a rock, we found that it acted as a static resistor. We took this little finding of ours and based everything on it.

We were just missing one thing, which sense or senses should we appeal to? We couldn't tap into to smell, as that is something the plant already emits naturally and we didn't want to interfere with that. 

That left us with two big ones:

Sound

Plants are among the quietest beings. Humans and animals have been using sounds to communicate or signal since their very existence. Sound is the most powerful way to communicate as it is omnidirectional.

Sight

Most plants, with a few exceptions, are static. This is something I did not tamper much with but still wanted to appeal to this sense, to add some depth, and to make this product more accessible.

The biggest problems

During the initial investigation, things moved in a pretty fast manner, but now we had to start figuring out how to best make use of these variances and a lot of details around that. We faced numerous challenges, this is what kept us going for the fifth or sixth coffee per night;

What sound to use?

Music was the first thing that crossed our minds. We tried to think of other types of sounds, like soundscapes, but we decided to turn those variances into musical notes, and then decide what to do with the output later. The notes it generated were always random, that's kind of the whole point, but how do we make this sound harmonic enough? What does a plant sound like?

It took a lot of iterations to find the right collection of sounds that complement this experiment.

How does music relate to light?

Great, we solved sound. Now how do we translate it to light? Why do we need to light again? Ah, right, accessibility. That means we need the end-user who cannot hear the plant, or who decided to put it on mute, to still see the light and be able to see the activity.

C

Red

D

Orange

E

Yellow

F

Green

B

Violet

We solved it by translating every note into a unique colour. 7 notes for every colour of the rainbow, and all the other colours in between. Then, for every key, we set a different light intensity, the lower the key, the lower the light intensity.

What electronic platform to use?

There were many different kinds of electronic prototyping platforms. We decided to use Arduino because at the time it seemed like it would give us the most flexibility, and was the best-documented one.

Every configuration gives unique variances, sometimes too big, sometimes too small

This is by far the biggest problem we faced. We had to write a script that continuously measured the variances, created a region, and zoomed into or out to that region. This ensured that the plant was and remained always within range.

The product

We did not want to make this product stand out, neither did we attempt to make it look like it belonged to the future. For a plant to survive freestanding, it needs a pot. We needed the plant to take the limelight, not the pot, and not the light it emits. 

So we decided to merge everything into a single unit, hide all the equipment that we could, and make a feature out of what we couldn't. The result was a product made of the following components;

Ceramic pot

For the sake of the prototype, we decided to build it entirely of ceramic. We wanted a matte, natural, raw feel, so we decided to use slip casting, so we could produce as many as we desired inexpensively. To attain the look we were after, we teamed up with Mediterranean Ceramics and worked together to build an original out of clay, then created a mould of it. Eventually, we used slip-casting to build 5 identical prototype-pots. The whole process took a little over a month, as the weather in Malta was very humid at the time, so we had to redo certain steps.

Silver sensors

Two of the sensors had to be hooked on to the leaves, so they undoubtedly had to show, and why would we hide them? This presented us with an unforeseen challenging task. We needed to make sure the sensors do not rust on the first occasion, yet delicate enough to not bruise the leaf. Silver is a great conductor, delicate so much so it's used for jewellery and doesn't rust. Again, not my cup of tea, so I approached Nadege Renee, a jeweller and we collaborated on the sensors. We hooked the sensors with cloth covered cords, that seemed to compliment the silver and plant pretty nicely.

The enclosure

Since this was the one part of the prototype that would be hidden, we decided not to pay too much attention to detail here. It did, however, contain most of our work. Apart from the circuitry, it also contained a multi-colour LED strip, around its perimeter that was used to emit the colour corresponding to the note.

The enclosure then needed to be hooked to power and a synthesiser to produce the music. We never got around including that and a speaker in the enclosure, a project for the future. To save engineering efforts, we decided to hook the prototype up to a computer running Garageband.

Conclusion

All-in-all, I think the project was pretty successful. It was exhibited and shortlisted for best design in Milan Design Week at the Salone Satellite in 2012, in Paris at the Maison et Objet in 2013, and in 2014 at the Chelsea Flower Show, which event was honoured by the Queen's visit, but she cared very little for our stand. :(

The feedback it received was pretty rewarding, it was shortlisted for Best design in Salone Satellite 2012 and featured in many popular online forums for industrial and product design like Tuvie. But the best feedback I received was from the visitors themselves. Some spent over half an hour listening to it and altering the sounds as they touch the leaves - they'd be messing around with the current. Every time someone touches the plant, it usually plays a really high note. It was never planned for it to act that way, but it was very interesting seeing people get so engaged. 

But the best experience was when I met this other woman who was very interested in Koishi. As I'm explaining the concept to her, she started looking a little uneasy. When I asked if everything was all right, she looked square at me and said, "I'm already vegan, what the fuck am I gonna eat now?" And stormed out of the stand.