Generally speaking, plants tend to lack many humanlike vital signs, like that of a heartbeat, which would enable a grower to easily check its current status. Instead, one typically has to rely on more subtle clues.
But what if your plant could breathe and react to the touch of a human? That is exactly what Seoul-based Maker Yongho Jeong set out to do with Uncanny, a breathing plant installation creating unusual sensations using an Atmel-based Arduino Uno (ATmega328), an air pump and a current measurement circuit.
Derived from the German term Das Unheimliche, or “the opposite of what is familiar,” uncanny refers to a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be both familiar yet alien at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.
“The subject of this project is interaction between human and plant. My first thought was that, ‘Do plants breathe like we human do?’ I was amazed after learning that plants breathe and that their breathing is very similar to ours. So I wanted to show that plants do breathe llike humans and react to touch of human.”
Interested in learning more about this breathing plant installation? Check out the project’s official page here.
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