The ‘Intelligence’ of Plants
The founder of the ‘plant neurobiology movement’ Stephan Mancuso takes the view that our ” fetishisation of (mammalian) neurons, as well as our tendency to equate behaviour (and intelligence) with mobility, keeps us from appreciating what plants can do.” (Quote source).

Indeed, because they don’t move like animals, plants must by necessity develop an extensive, relational, and nuanced understanding of their local environments – arguably far beyond that of mammals like us. Plants therefore have to find everything they needs where they are located – and must have the capacity to defend themselves, while all the while remaining fixed in place. They must also cultivate ‘vectors’ – eg insects, animals or the wind to move their pollen to reproduce.

This “sessile life style,” as plant biologists term it, calls for an extensive and nuanced understanding of one’s immediate environment, since the plant has to find everything it needs, and has to defend itself, while remaining fixed in place. A highly developed sensory apparatus is required to locate food and identify threats.

Plants of course do frequently get eaten and so they would not want to have any irreplaceable organs like a brain or legs. To cope with this, plants therefore developed a modular design which can in some cases allow them to lose  to 90% of their body and yet still survive.  This an extraordinary capability and which has now parallel in the animal kingdom. “ Plants therefore have a level of resilience. that we can barely imagine”.

In this introductory talk Neuro-Botanist Dr. Stefano Mancuso presents intriguing evidence about how plants behave in what might be termed as ‘intelligent ways’ from a human perspective – i.e. fighting predators, maximising food opportunities. (It’s worth considering where/if his analysis falls into the trap of categorising intelligence as ‘like us’.)

(Excerpt from above video re root growth tips  – Stefano Mancuso: The roots of plant intelligence)

In his article in the New Yorker  ‘The Intelligent Plant’ Michael Pollan suggests that plants have evolved between fifteen and twenty distinct senses, including analogues of our five: smell and taste (i.e. they sense and respond to chemicals in the air or on their bodies); sight (they react differently to various wavelengths of light as well as to shadow); touch (a vine or a root “knows” when it encounters a solid object); and, it has been recently discovered, sound.

In a recent experiment, Heidi Appel, a chemical ecologist at the University of Missouri, found that, when she played a recording of a caterpillar chomping a leaf for a plant that hadn’t been touched, the sound primed the plant’s genetic machinery to produce defence chemicals. Another experiment, done in Mancuso’s lab and not yet published, found that plant roots would seek out a buried pipe through which water was flowing even if the exterior of the pipe was dry, which suggested that plants somehow “hear” the sound of flowing water. (Source)

Hence, whilst these are all further reasons to celebrate plants,  the  focus of this research will lie in discovering, listening to, celebrating and (where appropriate) encouraging the flourishing of the multiple forms of  ‘intelligence’ living at the artwork site, and its environs/atmospheres. This may include

• • Behaviours of plants (notably the emergent and established trees, grasses, sedges at the site)

  • Actions of related insects (various)

  • Changes in soil and soil bacteria (Notably in our case Purpureocillium)

  • Changes in atmospheres at the site

Being with Plants

Whilst plants are always in flux (often going through extraordinarily different phases where sometimes as much as 90% of their mature bodies can be become absent) – their fixated/sessile nature offers us an amazing opportunity to return to be with them, time after time. Plants therefore offer us an opportunity to be fully present with them. This idea is summed up  poetically by Ryan Shea in this podcast from the Nature Institute – in which he also reminds us that “the trees can’t actually grab your face and turn you towards them, so you have to do some of the work yourself.”

Setting Limits/Direction

Setting limits is vital in any arts project – and certainly one of this potential scope. @ April 2024, I have elected to make the following choices to frame subsequent initial work.

The project's starting focus will predominantly be on:

1: Observing/'coming to terms' with the  plant, fungal and invertebrate life and the supporting atmospheres that are profoundly governing and directing the evolution of the biological life at the site. {i.e. the on-site/in range non-human intelligences}.

2: Investigating the multiple, entangled 'intelligences' perceivable on site: consistent with the driving concept that 'intelligence' (a notoriously difficult to define term) is just one among many ways of being in worlds; and that it is profoundly entangled - given that everything in the more than-human (and of human) world is hitched to everything else. Hence, intelligence 'in the field' should not be categorised or reduced to something that is necessarily 'like us'. 

3: Developing commonality with First Nations 'right ways' of knowing and understanding intelligence within Country.

4: Using learnings from 1 - 3 to frame direct and shape the imagined symbiotic art forms.

FAI will therefore attempt to avoid repeating theories/practices  that have often (reductively) chosen to categorise ‘intelligence’ within human terms, as a implicit pillar of humanity’s longstanding taxonomic and anthropocentric project.

FAI also recognises and values the unique values of Indigenous biocultural knowledge and practices, and intends that the project’s key questions should remain constant with ‘cross-cultural’, ‘two-way’ or ‘right-way’ knowledge making/re-reviving . (See this related interview on ethnobotany and biocultural knowledge with Dr. Gerry Turpin from my prior project Carbon_Dating).

These stated foci build on my past projects (like the native grasses themed project Carbon_Dating) to recognise plants in so many ways define our biocultural environments – and therefore our capacity to live and share worlds with them.

What’s in it For Us? vs. Rights to Be/Become

The FAI team are effectively therefore acting as ‘native plant (and other species) guardians’ – playing our small part in guaranteeing their capacity to flourish.

Plants are super-critical to our survival because they provide us with oxygen, sustenance, clothing, medicine and more. However, the flourishing of any of these non-humans should not simply be dependent on their utilitarian use. Plants, like all other non-human life, have their own rights to be and become, and on their own terms. (This idea is endemic to the mission statement of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance ‘rights of nature’)

Recognising the Rights of Nature in law, means that we reject the notion that nature is human property and we legally recognise the rights of the natural world to exist, thrive and evolve. Recognising that the natural world is just as entitled to exist and evolve as we are, necessarily changes the way humans act.

‘Rights of Nature’ is grounded in the recognition that humanity is just one member of the wider earth community, and that we have evolved with, and are dependent upon, a healthy, interconnected web of life on Earth. Rights of Nature laws create guidance for actions that respect this relationship.

This assertion doesn’t suggest that we shouldn’t harvest or eat plants or use them in other ways: However critically we should act respectfully towards them – and consider them  as much more than a back grounding to our human worlds (something  Wandersee and Schussler noted in 1999 that stems from our innate ‘plant blindness’). 

FAI’s aim therefore is that the site/artwork will evolve predominantly according to its own needs – and not ones that necessarily suit humankind. Its worth noting that science based management decisions, such as weed control or replanting, are also therefore understood and planned within that altruistic process.

The intention of this series of posts is to develop some of the philosophical threads that will bind the project.

Forest Art Intelligence (FAI) comprises

1. 1.  A regenerating forest; which is also regarded as the project’s meta-artwork

   2. a series of planned, temporal actions that our art and science team take to encourage that forest’s regeneration.

   3. a series of on-site hybrid creations (named ‘Art Intelligences’) invented as the project unfolds that evolve to occupy their own ecological ‘niches’ that can assist supporting that forest’s growth.

   4. a public engagement strategy/campaign to
      – illuminate the forest’s unique processes of intelligent natural regrowth
      – promote an more inclusive definition of intelligence that engages with  the non-human world.

The FAI project therefore poses the following key questions:

• How to develop a series of speculative, embedded forms, called ‘Art Intelligences’, capable of growing and evolving alongside a regenerating forest that can ALSO benefit that forest’s health.

• How might such Art Intelligences slowly find, and then occupy, their own intelligent ‘niches’, within that forest’s ecology

• How might such artworks bring attention to the extraordinary non-human intelligences that underpin natural systems AND harness them to inspire and direct this experimental sci-art process.