draft 200904: towards pataphores of plant guilds… (at the moment prosaic descriptions based on metaphores and archetypes, not very 'pata' yet).

Layers are the different vertical strata of the environment, that are a home for different plant species. All plants can live in different layers, but each layer is dominated by a specific type of plants, best suited for the environmental conditions in that particular layer. Each layer has particular morphological structures (the shapes in which plants grow above and underground), ways of time-binding and unbinding and particular reproductive mechanisms (through touch, through air, using pollinators, etc.).

Plants in this layer are the stanchions of the world. They loop over the other life-forms, diffusing otherwise sharp light and tinting it viridian - making sure that the colour of the greening force (Viriditas) seeps through every particle of air, liquids and solids. These quiet and slow giants shade and colour the world, as well as provide support through the thick bones of their trunks. The bones (thin and elongated, massive and sturdy) support the plant's vast overhanging bodies, that spread, lace-like for kilometres across the roof of the world. They also provide support to the plants in other layers, whose own skeletons are too fragile, or non-existent. They are allowed to crawl upwards, towards the light and a better view of the world. These plants are so huge and so ancient that, close to the ground, they seem fossilised and almost mineral. Their behaviour, as seen from the ground, seems extremely slow and inactive. However, deep underground and high above ground, they dominate the landscape with their muted, murmuring whispering conversations. Their reproduction cycle is equally slow and majestic. When they are ready to produce offspring, their highest branches touch and fuse with each other, forming elegant arches. Over a long time, they weave themselves together, moving inwards, from the branches into the inner cells of the plants. Once the process has woven together every cell of the two plants, the parents' barks burst, allowing for the new plants to grow from within, devouring the parents as they mature.

• metaphor: shelter, roof, pillar, column
• archetype: spiritual leader

The multi-jointed balusters of these plants endlessly reach towards their kin, forming curved (sometimes gnarly, sometimes smooth) portals into and out of the world. On top of these portals, they sprout a meshwork of thin appendages that can also be joined with other plants, forming more or less dense tunnels, caves and niches - habitat for the darkness-loving flora. Through the various relationships with their brethren, these plants guide the shape of the landscape. By creating spaces of darkness, twilight and light, they attract and repel different species of lower growth. Underground their roots mirror their branches and hold the topsoil in place. They are able to flower and bear fruit and so communicate with the non-vegetal species, as well as channel information from the outside into the vegetal realm. With the slow dance of their balusters and appendages, they can sometimes enact scenes from other worlds, impersonating humans, animals and machines…

• metaphor: doors, windows, passages
• archetype: architect, policy-maker

These plants change their density and hardness depending on the presence and absence of external threats. In calm periods, they form thin, glass-like translucent screens, framed by their narrow, angular branches. In more turbulent times, or in parts of the world that need intimate and secluded spaces, the plants swell into fortified walls of woven thorns. The branches turn into spiky lengths of barbed wire, making the passage in/out of the world a very painful affair… Some of these plants flower and fruit, both of which are carried by the wind and can bring news from other environments. They have a boomerang-like ability, so always return home from far-off lands. Underground, their roots don't spread wide, but are similarly robust and dense and have the same shape-shifting property.

• metaphor: barrier, wall, fence
• archetype: activist, warrior

A wide variety of plants in this layer makes them difficult to classify. They come in all colours, shapes and sizes, but all of them have two things in common: their bodies are soft, as they possess no bones and they are short lived, ephemeral. This ephemeral nature makes them prolific and promiscuous, fast living and extroverted. They are seductive and buoyant, brimming with energy from the moment they are born, to the moment they die. Most of the plants like to socialise and are always seen in groups of various sizes. The groups are open to foreigners, so often change shape and function. They flower, mate and fruit, with anyone interested. In this layer, hybrids are most common (producing extraordinary shapes and varieties) and evolution is fast (through a rapid sequence of generations). Their soft bodies make them fast movers - they respond to light, scent, colour and wind, changing their shapes as contortionists. Underground, their roots can be deep, but not broad - only lightly holding them in place.

• metaphor: furnishings, mirrors, ornaments
• archetype: artist, entrepreneur

Plants in this layer don't care much for the world above-ground, although they need some light to grow. They do sprout minuscule, horizontally-oriented, broad leafy formations, optimised to collect light and information. The collected materials pass thorough ergonomically designed shafts down to where these plants mean business - the shallow layer of soil. They are the edge between the life above and below ground. They are avid analysts of both and translators between the two. In their carefully grown rhizomes, they form elaborate networks without a centre. They prepare various concoctions of chemicals and data, to explain and influence the world (above and below). They have convoluted and extended rhizomatic communication conduits, spanning the whole world. They communicate and mediate with all layers through their roots, rootlets and swollen stems. They don't flower, but reproduce through cloning, grafting and direct chemical mutation underground.

• metaphor: foundation, basement, bedrock
• archetype: alchemist, technologist, scientist

The plants in this layer are the twilight-dwellers between life and death. Their lives are extremely short and they spend long periods in suspension / hibernation. They indulge in decay (both of self and of others). They live in large, rather conservative clans, who stick to themselves and their traditions. They are hard-working, no-nonsense life-forms, at the edge of the plant-kingdom. They communicate and cross-fertilise with non-plant species who are equally attracted to death and decay. Their thick, fluffy clumps cloak the topsoil in dampened colours - mushy greens, blues & purples, dark reds, rich browns and cloudy greys. The colours change depending on their diet - they digest the dead from various layers, swallowing and transforming matter and knowledge & passing it down to the soil, nourishing the life beneath it. Their roots don't reach deep. They are modest and satisfied with occupying a few centimetres of the surface, forming a translucent shroud, a wooly veil of the land. They reproduce incestuously, through spores which they exhale at the moment of death, mating while dying…

• metaphor: carpet, floor covering, veil
• archetype: gardener, undertaker, garbage collector

These plants are the only ones in the world in which an individual plant can indulge in spatial travel. They criss-cross the other layers, connecting, entangling and confusing their dwellers. They can be fickle and treacherous at times. Their tangles are communication conduits between the different layers above ground. However, the information that passes through the twining vines rarely arrives unchanged - translation is never perfect, always enigmatic and slightly glitchy. Some plants in this layer are aggressive bullies, that can even turn murderous. Others can enjoy a cushy, parasitic life, usually sucking-up to the larger plants. Others again turn into explorers, venturing across ground and layers, to the furthest reaches of the world. As their shape reflects their journeys for the rest of their lives, they take utmost care to the twining and tangling of their paths, creating magnificent, twisting and undulating ornaments throughout the landscape. They grip the ground lightly, without venturing underground. In order to prevent being blown away, their grips are distributed throughout their elongated bodies and can cling to any surface - soil, plant, rock… They are able to flower and produce long, thin seed-pods in elegant, entangled mating rituals, which occur when two vines (of appropriate species and sex) touch and entangle each other.

• metaphor: connection, communication, cabling, plumbing
• archetype: trickster, translator, hacker

Functions are actions that particular plants undertake to sustain themselves and balance (in) the environment. By performing these actions, the plants take on different roles in the vegetal society. In order to perform these actions, they rely on microscopic organisms that live in a symbiotic relationship with the plant. When the plant is young, it has the ability to summon a specific type of micro-organism, that will allow the plant to assume a particular role in society. This role can change only once in the plant's life-time, when it reaches adulthood. In a specific ritual, a plant can either accept its childhood role for the rest of its life, or go through a role-shifting phase to accept a new role. Not all micro-organisms can be summoned in the childhood phase - some are solely adulthood-related actions.

This function can be summoned from childhood. A plant which accepts this role is able to absorb and transform an important mechano-chemical. This chemical can be diffused back into the environment, in order to change the life-giving properties of the soil. This role can increase and decrease the density of the world, as well as steer growth and morphology of plants for generations to come. The micro-organisms assisting the plants in this function are swarms of tiny organo-robotic creatures, hybrids of vegetal and machinic organisms. They are capable of mechanically transforming matter on the scale of atoms and molecules. They can change the bio-mechanical make-up of soil by creating holes and tunnels, as well as shape plants themselves (pushing and pulling on plant matter in stems and roots. They move as swarms (not unline insects) inside the plants and underground, and can move from one plant to another when their roots touch (if the other plant has accepted this function).

• metaphor: transforming, crafting, creating
• archetype: industry, technology (bio-engineering, nanotech…)

This function can be assumed from childhood. Plants function as immune system of the world. They protect themselves and others from external threats and dangerous internal anomalies. They can do this both offensively (attacking the threat directly) and defensively (healing the diseased plant, or environment). The micro-organisms responsible are liquid flows of single-cellular, amorphous beings. They are able to stream through the plant's veins and moisten their surfaces, thereby coating them against threats. In sunlight some of them can temporarily evaporate into a gasseous form, thereby being able to travel to other plants through air. In most other cases, they will form droplets that can rain down on other plants, or diffuse through the soil.

• metaphor: defending, protecting, healing
• archetype: border, front-line, hospital, clinic

This function can only be summoned when adulthood is reached. The plants who assume this function are invaded by heaps of dust-like particles that are able to decompose plant tissues and transform them into soil and nutrients for the environment. These plants give up their physical form and decide to live suffused throughout the world, communing with other plants by being consumed. The micro-organisms, the dust-particles have abrasive edges, that are able to carve through the cell-walls of plants, allowing their contents to pour out into the air and soil, freeing the plant juices (and plant perception) of their physical boundaries. The carved-out plant fossils remain as memories of the individuals. The fossils are brittle and will over time be reduced to fertile dust by wind and rain.

• metaphor: composing, conserving, decaying, dying, regenerating
• archetype: cemetery, waste-dump, sewage, sublimation

This function can be summoned from childhood. It is meant primarily for healthy, altruistic plants. The plants performing this function are required to continually seek solid, liquid and airborne chemicals, then dissolve them in blisters of living solution that grow across their bodies, as soon as the function is assumed. Once the blisters fill up, they swell and burst in pulses of a viscous liquid. Above ground, the pulsing droplets are smaller and can spray metres through the air. Underground, the spray is heavier, but with higher pressure, so can quickly burst through the pores in the soil. The chemicals are primarily meant to sustain the growth of plants, but their composition and concentration have a strong influence on the shape of the plants and their bio-chemical make-up. This function can speed up and slow down the growth in the world, as well foster its diversity.

• metaphor: making, cooking, gardening, hunting & gathering, parenting, educating
• archetype: philosophy, religion, school, kitchen, library, temple, family

This is a strictly adult function, that can only be assumed by particular plants capable of sprouting open translation organs in their flowers. The evolution made this into an adult function due to the fragile relationships between the plants and the non-plant pollinators. The action of the plants with this role might be damaging to the world, if the attraction skill is not mastered. Young plants can become apprentices, but the full function can only be attained when the skill is sufficient. The attraction of non-plant pollinators is only permitted to be exercised in particular seasons, while it can be performed as practice and entertainment with other plants at all times. The micro-organisms involved in this function are clouds of airborne gasses, that act as pheromones, affecting emotional states of their recipients. In plants, this can be visible through coloration. In seasons where communication with the non-vegetal is impossible, the clouds can carry reproductive cells themselves. When this communication is possible, they attract moving creatures and seduce them to carry reproductive cells between the plants.

• metaphor: seducing, imitating, storytelling, translating, poetry, con-artistry
• archetype: park, theatre, street, festival

draft version 200802 (will not be used)

Plants. Green, juicy, sensuous beings and sophisticated chemical factories. Expendable individuals, robust communities. Violent enemies and seductive partners. Tasty to humans and other selected animals. Humans. Inventive, impulsive, mobile and adaptive creatures, able to fashion tools, cultivate living things (including ourselves) and manipulate symbols. Tasty to plants, particularly when decomposing. From single, isolated sprouts in scorched deserts, to unstoppable tangles in dense forests, from huts on top of mountains to sprawling urban jungles; humans have always had a curious relationship with plants. Plants and humans eat, consume each other and each other's waste products. Humans need plants, yet they are also seen as a threat. Plants provide humans with air, food, fuel and shelter. They are sources of inspiration, imagination, beauty and mystery. At the same time, the more aggressive plants crack their walls, invade their crops and poison their foods. Slowly, relentlessly, patiently… So familiar, yet so alien. For a period of time, humans attempted to keep plants out of their cities and homes, to construct a world in which they could be independent from them. In which they could suck the knowledge out of the plant temples and leave them to die. The plants waited… Slowly the world started to crumble. Slowly, the plants began to move back into the human world, through the cracks in the pavements and doors blown open by turbulent weather. This time around humans changed their tactics. They were going to become symbionts with plants. Human-plant-hybrids. It was going to take a long time, but they were determined to succeed. The alternative was slow but certain death of most humans and quite a few species of plants. They began to grow plants beyond mere food and fuel crops. They began to cultivate plants to cultivate humans. Aside from still sprouting delectable foods, gardens became places in which things could generate, grow and transform. At first, people cared mainly about the food that the gardens produced. There was one difference though, they attempted feeding the whole eco-system rather than humans alone. Not only that, the humans wanted to feed a culture that would help them creep out of an overstressed, slightly schizophrenic social and economic systems that they were living in. Some of them called it permaculture, others open re/source culture. Many names and many approaches to find a way forward, without forgetting the past. One of these cultures decided that changing the world could only happen if you would start growing your own world, an eco-system that can sustain itself and reach out to others. People thaught each other in small communities, a few neighbours at a time. Soon after, they connected to other communities and learned from them, using all available means of communication. An alternative map of the world was created – the one that connected the gardens and the paths of the gardeners. Their thoughts grew beyond their small patches of green and reached out to entangle the whole planet into a fertile ARG, augmented reality garden. etc…

Version 0.1 Feb 2008

project_groworld