Installation, video, objects, website in darknet
2019
The artwork was created in collaboration with
Julia Vergazova
Alexey Boriskin: conceptual development, darknet website development and hosting
Julia Vergazova: conceptual development, video production, objects production, assamblage
In an age of anthropogenic global warming and genetically modified organisms, not to mention Big Data and world-encompassing computing and communications networks, it makes no sense to oppose nature to culture, or a “state of nature” to human society, or the natural to the artificial.
We live in a world where all efficient agriculture is connected to
informational systems and specialized software. The cities are covered with overlapping Wi-Fi networks; the
ocean floor is covered with numerous fiber optic cables.
The project addresses communication of plants
and one of the possible paths to the emergence of the Internet of everything: the darknet of plants. Its
node is exposed to the Tor network portal: http://flora2ezl5yol5j4tle3hkdq767h6m4wlzbhpvqpccrrbc24gc7er4yd.onion
Open TOR Portal link (TOR browser required)
Existing system of constant interaction with the arrays of data and multiple connections to them creates conditions for emergence of new functional communicative elements, cyborgs – fragments of synthetic biology, created by microoperations and internal communications. New hybrid vegetal organisms form their own communication network connected to the existing human-made data networks. They bypass firewalls, use their own wired and wireless channels of data transmission and establish datacenters in the roots. Co-operating with other forms of biological life, they grow learning neural networks. Plants get to know each other through existing social networks in a hidden from humans way. Thus, the most oppressed and prone to the genetic modifications kingdom of living organisms takes an evolutionary leap and gets integrated in the social and cultural spheres.
Camera flies over the green zone in order to detect the centers of development and distribution of cyber flora. The dripping sound refers to the inaccessible language of plants and at the same time to the processes of high-speed data transfer, financial transactions, on the basis of which our economy functions. Now it is the economy of algorithms playing on the stock exchange. The conversation of the idle ATMs seems like an appropriate backdrop for contemplating the forest - the raw material for making paper money. Raw materials on which the existence of a capitalist society completely depends. And a resource that was expecting the required level of development of human technologies to deploy and optimize its own processes.
4 video interviews with artists and theorists are integrated into the infographic. These are Teresa Schubert,
Katya Nikitina, Ippolit Markelov and Alexander Evangeli.
Also, one of the videos is dedicated to the
plants of the Yandex development offices.
Teresa Schubert
Katya Nikitina
Ippolit Markelov
Alexander Evangeli
Plants
Video from flora.onion darknet portal.
The data, encoded by byte, is transmitted to the contemplating
plants using Li-Fi technology.
This technology uses visible light as a storage medium. After 2010, the
technology was recognized as ineffective by humans, but it was adopted by plants.
The flashes broadcast
Sadie Plant's text "Information War in the Age of Dangerous Substances." Historically, most of these
substances were obtained from plants. Now we can say that plants lobbied for the appearance of the darknet
in order to buy fertilizers there and apply them to the land by the drug stasher.
Documentation of the plant cinema in the abandoned estate Sushnevo-1, Vladimir region, Russia
Acknowledgments: Dmitry Andreev, Theresa Schubert, Katya Nikitina, Ippolit Markelov, Alexander Evangeli, Boris Klyushnikov