FUTURES EXPO

The Wood Wide Web

By Els Aarts, Laurens van Mulukom and Sieta van Horck

Do trees communicate? Recent studies suggest that they might be more interconnected than formerly presumed. Plants are not merely individuals competing for survival, but are rather helping each other to survive by interacting through fungi on their roots. This fungus is made up of a mass of thin threads, also known as a mycelium. These threads act as a kind of underground internet, linking the roots of different plants and trees.

This interconnected network enables trees to transfer carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus via mycelia, forming an information superhighway that speeds up interactions between large and diverse populations of individuals. The more we learn about these underground networks, the more our ideas about plants and trees need to change. They are not just quietly growing there, but by linking to the ‘wood wide web’ they can help out their neighbors by sharing nutrients and information. This installation lets you explore their story.

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The Installation

The installation consists of a variety of 9 different plant, hanging form the ceiling of the vrijplaats. A sign in the beginning of the installation invites the user to wear the bluetooth headphones and to touch the plants in order to discover more about this hidden network. For the installation we used a video by professor Suzanne Simard, which can be found here. By touching each plant, a sound file would be played back through the headphones. This way, the user is able to experience the full story in a linear fashion and gaining a better understanding of the research. However, in order to experience the network at work, the user can touch multiple plants at once, triggering the files to play at the same time and therefore hearing a multitude of sounds while not being able to distinguish a story. This also allows for an aspect of playfulness, as most users played with this possibility at the end of the story.

Currently, our interaction with technology is often characterized by non-natural materials that are used to build phones, computers etc. For the exhibition, our aim was to rethink these interaction patterns while also opening up discussions about human relationships with plants. Technology and nature are often seen as two different entities, with the Wood Wide Web we try to close this gap and maybe also come to a new understanding of nature as it is. We believe that, when we let go of our superior human perspective on science, we discover that nature has intelligence of its own and maybe let's us re-appreciate and reconnect with the world around us. The Wood Wide Web tries to let the user experience this in a more organic fashion and we hope that the knowledge that is gained during this proces will inspire the user to gain new perspective on nature.