Plant Blindness Th es i s 2020
Communicating with plants through the Biosense
Plant Blindness Communicating with plants through the Biosense Yue Leng MFA products of design school of visual arts
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Plant Blindness: Communicating with plants through the Biosense Š Copyright 2020 by Yue Leng All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing form of the author. To see more, visit www.yueleng.me For inquiries contact yueleng1994@gmail.com School of Visual Arts MFA Products of Design 136 West 21st Street New York, NY 10011-3213 www.productsofdesign.sva.edu 2
Plant Blindness: Communicating with plants through the Biosense
YUE LENG Author&Designer
Allan Chochinov Chair, MFA in Products of Design Thesis Advisor
Andrew Schloss Thesis I Advisor
Jennifer Rittner Thesis II Advisor
Ernest Whitman Piper Editor 3
contents
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Section 1.
Introduction The Big Question Personal Statement Key Terminology Literature Review Understanding Plantlism Design Thinking
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Section 2.
Project Highlights P V E P E C. System Synthesis The plantlism Lab Miniature Pot Be Smart, With Plant Double flower nightclub Section 3.
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Additional Work Subject Matter Experts
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Section 4.
Addenda Bibliography Acknowledgments
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“ Digital technology has made life easier in many ways, however, as we’ve advanced technologically, we’ve welcomed increased stress and distraction into our lives.” — Joe Patitucci / Founder of Data Garden
“ Plants are fashion.” — Olivia Rose / Founder of Bodega Rose
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Question
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At a time when millions of urban millennials around the world find it difficult to get out into nature and enjoy it, how can we use design to help us recognize and understand plant blindness in our daily life?
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Personal story I have always been fascinated by nature. I like to have green plants in my apartment. I always wanted to dress myself up with natural colors. In my art studies and in my career , I like to learn from nature and spend time observing the environment in which I live,drawing inspiration from nature. Also, I am an urban resident who grew up in an industrial city far from nature. When I was a kid, I liked to take my friends to explore the mini garden at my house. At that time, I found that the children who are often exposed to the natural environment will be more outgoing than other children. As I grow, I am getting further and further away from the "green." Gray concrete buildings constitute my daily life. I am more and more introverted, unhappy, and frustrated with life. One solution has been to instigate change with plant therapy. I try to buy plants, travel, and visit the botanical garden on weekends. But this still cannot satisfy my desire and demand for a green world. I believe that I’m not the only one in this situation. I hope I can use my design practice to help myself and other people who have the same symptoms as I do to get better living conditions.
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MY MANIFESTO As a result of my deep and enduring passion for plants, I am committed to sharing my consciousness about them with others. From what I can tell, people tend to pay attention to animals but overlook the possibilities of an emotional connection with plants. Friends, relatives, and colleagues have dogs and cats as pets. They walk them, talk to them, photograph them doing silly, cute, or funny things, weep when they’re sick, and mourn when they die. But do people feel as connected to their household plants? To the plant life that they encounter out in the world? Although plants provide raw materials for food, clothing, shelter, and medicine, they are not animated like animals. They don’t move in a way that makes people notice them. Even though plants beautify the environment and relax people, they don’t perform their functions as explicitly as animals do. Even the BBC's documentary "Private Life of Plants," chose to use an "animal" model to express the wonderful world of plants. They selected dynamic plants (such as Nepenthes, felt moss, etc.) to show the "smart" side of the plants. Ordinary flowers and plants do not seem to give as convincing of performance. This has more serious repercussions on our lives and our environment. When the forest fires in Australia and the Amazon rainforest in Brazil occurred, people's concerns were not on how many plants were dying but on the loss of animals. If people fail to keep plants in their consciousness, plants will disappear in the future. Humans will eventually pay a terrible price for not being able to obtain plants. My manifesto is simple and achievable.
Step One. Acknowledge Plant Blindness The first step to treating your plant blindness is to realize that you have plant blindness.
Step Two. Share Plant Stories Many companies today advocate for more eco-conscious lifestyles, or for building community through plant ownership. Often, the purpose of their initiatives or 12
products is to allow people without plants to own plants, and help plant owners find new plants to enjoy. But most companies only encourage users to own plants or share their knowledge of basic gardening. These methods have not played a fundamental role in curing plant blindness. Because most people think that plants are human accessories, users do not have much enthusiasm for paying more attention to plants. I want users to share plant stories to make emotional connections with their plants, and to share those connections with other people. In a sense, this is a way of normalizing the emotional bonds we need to have with nature.
Step Three. Individuate the Experience Even if you own plants, you still feel that you are in control of your relationship with plants. If the plant dies, you can always buy a new one. By seeing each plant as an individual, with a name, a history, a personal story, a set of characteristics and personality traits, people can create those emotional bonds more naturally. I am trying to get people to activate loving relationships between humans and plants.
Step Four. Center Equality I will reexamine the relationship between people and plants— to switch from humans controlling plants to the realization that humans and plants are equal. I am interested in plant blindness because I agree with some scholars that plants have consciousness. I think that people and plants should enjoy equal rights. I compare it to pet ownership -- some organizations advocate for rights on behalf of pets or wild animals. But only a few people are fighting for plants to have those rights as well.
Step Five. Humanize Them; Plantilize You Personally, I treat my plants like my children. Sometimes I feel that plants are as emotional and thoughtful as I am.I want to use design to show people how plants can have the same emotional and behavioral patterns. Perhaps this will cause humans to reexamine the relationship between humans and plants. Because plants and people have similar characteristics, people may feel closer to plants if we encourage those feelings. Through this work, we will slowly treat plant blindness. In the end, humans can redefine the importance of plants in human life.
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"It's so easily addictive. You get to know them. It's kind of awesome when you give them what they want, and then they grow and give you flowers and new leaves." — Christan Summers / Co-founder of the Brooklyn-based plant emporium Tula
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Key Terminology Botanical Illiteracy Botanical illiteracy means people have a lack of interest in plants and infrequent exposure to plant science before humans reach college.
Biophilia Human beings are inherently intimate with other life forms, such as loving nature and green ecology.
Bio Relationship Plants and humans build deep intimate relationships using biological media to extend plant and human perception.
Ecofeminism Gendering Nature Ecofeminist theory asserts that capitalism reflects only paternalistic and patriarchal values. This notion implies that the effects of capitalism have not benefited women and has led to a harmful split between nature and culture.
Ecological Balance Within a certain period, between the organisms and the environment in the ecosystem, and between the various populations of organisms, through energy flow, material circulation, and information transmission, they can achieve a highly adaptive, coordinated and unified state with each other.
HSP Highly Sensitive Person Your trait is typical. It is innate. You are more aware than others of subtleties. You are also more easily overwhelmed. This trait is not a discovery, but it has been misunderstood. Sensitivity is valued differently in different cultures.
Plant blindness Plant blindness is a human tendency to ignore plant species. 16
Plantlism Plantlism is a legend of greenness, a color of natural tranquility; Plantlism is a symbol of prosperity and life, and it is the support of sublimation of life; Plantlism is a guarantee of health and vitality of hope. Funky plantlism is natural, green, environmentally friendly, and healthy. It is a more extreme lifestyle and attitude than environmentalism. The most apparent difference between environmentalism and plantlism is that the latter is more extreme than the former and more concerned about the quality of life and health index brought by native plants. From the perspective of plantlism, natural environmental protection and green health are both correct for their political survival.
P V E P E C. System Plant Visualize Emotional Perception Expression Communication System Plant visualization emotion perception expression communication system is a new system for establishing visual communication between plants and humans.
Sensory Processing Sensitivity Sensitive processing sensitivity ( SPS)i is a temperament or personality trait that involves "increased sensitivity of the central nervous system and deeper cognitive processing of physical, social, and emotional stimuli." The characteristic of this feature is "the tendency to 'pause' in new situations, more sensitive to subtle stimuli, and the use of more in-depth cognitive processing strategies to take countermeasures, all of which are caused by positive and positive emotional responses Driven. Negative " People with particularly high SPS content are considered highly sensitive people (HSP). Psychologist Elaine Aron and her husband Arthur Aron coined the terms SPS and HSP in the mid-1990s, and they developed the High Sensitivity Personality Scale (HSPS) questionnaire for measuring SPS. Other researchers use various other words to express this responsiveness to stimuli seen by humans and other species. According to Arons and colleagues, people with high SPS account for about 15–20% of the population. Although some researchers consistently associate high SPS with adverse outcomes, other researchers associate it with increased responsiveness to positive and negative impacts. Aron and colleagues pointed out that top SPS personality traits are not an obstacle. 17
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“User centricity is incredibly problematic. Focusing on the narrow goals of the user as it relates to the business as it exists today leads us to a narrow view of the opportunity space that we’re working in.” — J. Paul Neeley / Speculative Designer
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Literature Review 20
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Plant Blindness as a Modern Phenomenon Contemporary Botanists such as William H. Murdy and Professor Qian Yi have expressed concern about the construction of an ecological civilization. Contrary to anthropocentrism, ecological civilization promotes harmony between humans and nature. The central idea is that humans must respect the environment, including the balance and stability of all living things in the natural world and natural ecosystems; humans should also follow the laws of natural ecosystems’ production activities and consumption activities. All actions that destroy natural ecosystems will ultimately endanger humans and the earth on which humans live, and must be firmly abandoned. For such a civilization to take shape, they have proposed two concepts: Plant Blindness and Botanical Illiteracy, the goal of which is to help more people pay attention to this phenomenon. According to Liu Guangyu's science. net Blog publication, "In China, the lack of plant awareness seems to correlate strongly with ecological devastation. " Perhaps they're feeding each other. As the industrialization of the last century brought more people into cities and away from rural communities, they became more physically and emotionally 22
separated from plant life. In China, this lack of knowledge of plants is a common problem. The reasons are that the lack of understanding of plants is a common problem of highly educated people in the past, and it does not affect people's enjoyment of food during meals, nor does it affect daily life. Many people ask: "Not knowing plants does not affect our lives. Why should we pay more attention to plants?" Perhaps the lack of plant consciousness is the reason why China's environment has deteriorated for thousands of years. This conflict between plants, cognition, and social culture is not unique to China. According to the article, 'Plant blindness' is a real thing: why it's a real problem too� by Angelique Kritzinger at the University of Pretoria, the phenomenon of not knowing plants and not being interested in plants is widespread all over the world. And it is especially prevalent in urban millennials dwellers. I think design can help urban millennial dwellers become aware of plant blindness.
Most people don't understand or see plants. In 1998, American botanists Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee proposed the phenomenon of "plant blindness." According to the Plant Science Bulletin. Botanical Society of America, it refers to when humans "cannot notice the plants in their environment and to ignore their
importance in the biosphere and human society." Related symptoms include being unable to appreciate the beauty of plants as well as overemphasizing the human-centered perspective, claiming that plants are inferior to animals, and mistakenly concluded that they are not worth considering in short, systematic disregard for plants.
Urbanization and Our Relationship to Nature The urbanization process is accelerating, getting faster and faster; our lives no longer depend directly on plants; people are not interested in plants. In the context of plant blindness, people who have been divorced from nature need to redefine plants in their lives. The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need. "The future will belong to the naturesmart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need." — Richard Louv: Last Child in the Woods
As Louv says in his introduction, The Nature Principle is "about the power
of living in nature—not with it, but in it. We are entering the most creative period in history. The twenty-first century will be the century of human restoration in the natural world." And he proposed that driven by reasonable economic, social, and environmental solutions, through the existence of natural balance, humanity will flourish. Humanity cannot grow on a finite planet indefinitely. A sustainable development method that is in harmony with the rhythm of nature means that the needs and rights of today's generation will not infringe on the needs and rights of future generations. This also means that we must consciously change the purely human-centric world view and instead establish a more balanced relationship with nature.
Cognition and the Conditioning of Societal Norms Some cannot see their ignorance, and that fact is more terrible than ignorance itself. When they talk about knowledge and ignorance, people often quote Socrates: “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” Some people are ignorant and place themselves above others as the knower of some essential truth that others cannot see. Some often overestimate their ability and the scope of their knowledge. In essence, this is “the illusion of knowledge.” In 23
turn, this illusion of knowledge creates a situation where we can easily impose our cognition and judgment on others, and mistakenly believe that our perception and experience can represent everyone’s. This situation is called the “curse of knowledge” and is the real source of many problems and tragedies. I contend that we should analyze how we think about our attitudes and ideas about plants. What factors influence our ignorance about plants?
“We often rely on society to replace our thinking.” - Philip Fernbach and Steven Sloman: The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone:
Human knowledge often exists outside of individuals, not in the brain. We often rely on society to think for us instead. First, how does the environment store knowledge? The simplest example is washing dishes. Imagine how we usually judge whether dishes are clean or not. It doesn’t need to be a complicated test, just look at the gloss on their surface, and you can probably judge whether they have been washed. This reliance on the external environment’s information to make judgments can be understood as storing that knowledge in the external environment. How do we know that brighter dishes means that they’re cleaner? This is essentially an experience that relies on the judgment of the principle behind the surface gloss of the plates. We do not know the specific policy, but we probably have such 24
knowledge, and we know that it exists in this environment. It gives us some of our signals. We only need to process it abstractly. I think the same is true of human attitudes towards plants. Although we have all learned about sustainable development, when we implement policies, most of us seek to maximize the benefits. And we are constantly brainwashed by public opinion that it is the right choice to sacrifice plants in exchange for continuous economic development. When the ecosystem has lost its original balance, most people believe that as long as we reduce our impact on nature, the ecosystem will rebalance itself. This is also the consequence of our ignorance and the incorrect positioning towards plants on our earth. Humans have attempted to locate themselves in nature, in contrast with trying to find something in nature most similar to themselves. And humans can only visually recognize what they already know. Mark Twain said, “We are all cognitive misers.” Cognitive misers are individuals who rely on visible surface information and simple, effective strategies to evaluate information and make decisions and use intuitive judgment systems to reduce cognitive burdens. Because our brain occupies 2% of the body weight but consumes 20% of the body’s energy, it cannot always pay attention to all the stimuli, so it is necessary to use common
habitual behaviors to reduce energy expenditure. 60% of our lives are habitual behaviors, so people are accustomed to staying in their comfort zones, accustomed to evasion, and even display some stubbornness and even prejudice derived from this. We will never see the actual appearance of the world; we only know the world we want to see. Most people like things that are in line with their beliefs, and don’t like things that are contrary to their ideas. People prefer to read reports that are consistent with their opinions and positions. But this is a similar phenomenon to refusing to see what they don’t want to see. People also regularly change their perspective on things. According to a survey, people who have a clear, predetermined position strengthen their predetermined position when they see evidence of mixed pros and cons. They will not completely ignore the part that differs from their own opinions but will try to find a reason to persuade themselves without paying attention to the contrary evidence. We often try to justify what we prefer, not necessarily what’s objectively true according to evidence. The typical mistake of human wisdom is to exclude things that negate one’s own experience and prefer ideas that match one’s personal experience. Humans think they have domesticated plants. This is just that humans have used their fixed thinking to figure out nature. In practice, humans avoid that which can help them alleviate plant blindness. In reality, we need to change
part of our lifestyle or part of our thinking. So under the human instinct thinking mode, how can we use people’s existing viewpoints to influence their thoughts and behavior?
Designers Respond to Nature In the context of plant blindness, people who have been divorced from nature need to establish a new model of getting along with plants. Everyone is naturally intimate with nature, but for most people, this sense of intimacy is suppressed. The easiest way to return to this intimacy is to recollect the feeling of being a child. When we were young, we all knew that we lived in a living world, and knew that we could sit under a tree and become its friend. Most mainstream education suppresses this concept. Because of that education, it is challenging for us to respond to our senses. It’s like being imprisoned in a room, and you can only occasionally look at the scenery outside from the window. Still, you can’t get in touch with those scenes. If people think that all living things except humans cannot think, why should people open themselves up to nature? But we are all using our senses. The world touches us. This happens every day. This is not a mysterious thing. When you meet and play with a cute puppy and share each other’s pure joy, words 25
cannot describe it. This is our inner world, but we are taught not to communicate with the inner universe because it is unscientific. Therefore, we neglect our own emotions and know nothing about it. But regression is possible. We need to awaken childlike wisdom. We must remember to ask ourselves in any situation, “How do I feel about this?” When you are used to asking yourself consciously, “what did I feel,” the substantial aesthetic dimension of life will reappear and give you wisdom. With this wisdom, it is evident how bad most environments are. Most schools feel bad. Most children know this, but they are forced to shut down their feelings. Most workplaces and hospitals feel bad, and most people (subconsciously) know it, but they also turn off that awareness. When our emotions are turned off, we also turn off our inner response to sensory feelings. As a result, we endure these circumstances and events that are completely unbearable. In the context of plant blindness, people who have been divorced from nature need to develop a new image of their future relationship with plants. What is the relationship between humans and nature? Are humans and plants two completely different species? If someone picks a flower, are they violating the rights of the plant? Thinking about this relationship allows you to re-examine your optimism. It lets 26
you stop thinking about relationships and logic that you are too lazy to sort out and respect the complexity of the system. It enables you to imagine other possibilities.
“We live in a very different world now, but we can reconnect with that spirit and develop new methods appropriate for today’s world and once again begin to dream.” — Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby: Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming The act of dreaming here is critical to how we develop speculative design methods. To dream is to imagine what is possible, not just what is realistic. In the context of plant blindness, people who have been divorced from nature need to develop a new image of their future relationship with plants. Design can give them a new language, a new set of imaginings for what that relationship might, and must, become. This “different world” Raby refers to isn’t just different from the past - what we’ve left behind, but also different from the future we have yet to construct. So the ecological damage we currently face and perpetuate is not necessarily the future we are destined to continue. In fact, by imagining beginning to dream - we can construct a future of healing. That healing must happen through an awakening to our
natural environment. We can heal our plant blindness through the design provocation that gives us a new capacity to dream. The reframer mindset calls into question all aspects of perception and its mechanisms. Are we at the helm of our bodies? Do we move of our own free will? Are our senses reliable? What is the difference between “I” and “you? “
fuelled by neuroscience and revelations about the neural path of sense. Others match the body up with technologies or structures never meant for the body, causing displacement in space, time, or subjectivity. Their functions can range from social remedy to body extender to social critique. Their disposition is alternately funny, jarring, instructive, or even violent. Reframers tend to test the limits of an idea, and the limits of the artist as well.
Just as Dunne and Raby refer to dreaming as the springboard for innovation, Madeline Schwartzman who is a New York City filmmaker and architect references the “reframer” as someone who takes an idea and turns it around until it means something new. Here is where opportunity and possibility grow. Reframing is an act of critical analysis in the service of design innovation. In terms of plant blindness, we might use this idea of reframing to ask a new set of questions: Do plants have emotions? What if we added human emotions to the plant cells to make the plant express sentiments similar to humans? When plants have emotions similar to humans, humans can read the emotional language of plants. Under such circumstances, are plants and humans two completely different species? Usually, the automatic mechanisms we think of as our own can have alternative pathways, new means of control, and surprising results. Some reframers are 27
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“ Empathy is a wonderful tool. Not just in our design work, but in life. It allows us to understand things from other people’s point of view.” — Mike Monteiro / Co-founder and Design director of Mule Design
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Understanding Plantlism 30
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Figure 1. Bushfires in Australia （2020）
We are as a society ignorant of plants, and we do not know how ignorant we are. The two forest fires in 2019 showed me that we have a kind of ignorance that needs to be solved urgently: plant blindness. Forests are often places we think of as beautiful and quiet, but over the past year, huge natural disasters in forests have been in the headlines. Australian mountain fires have been burning for many months and have recently eased; the Amazon forest has become a victim of political wrestling; the 32
grasslands of central Africa, as well as Russia’s Siberia, Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra, have also been threatened by wildfires. We focused more on how many animals died in the fire, and how “black carbon” accelerated climate change. But have not paid much attention to the critical point. Millions of trees were burned and disappeared. We pay more attention to the function of trees (creating oxygen and cleaning the air). But we ignore the existence of the tree itself. Trees don’t exist to provide us with energy.
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Figure 2. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2018) - "Urbanization".
Modern life becomes increasingly urbanized After 1960, the productivity of various countries developed rapidly, and some developed countries entered the stage of modern urbanization. Modernization usually refers to the process of continuous transformation of rural areas into urban areas with population concentration. In this process, the number of cities increases, the urban population increases, the size of cities expands, and the proportion of the urban population in the total population increases.
The number of people living in urban areas exceeds 4 billion, accounting for more than half of the world’s population. In the visualization, we can see the estimate of the number of people living in urban and rural areas in the United Nations World Urbanization Outlook. In 2017, 4.1 billion people lived in urban areas. This means that more than half (55%) of the world lives in urban environments. The United Nations estimates that this milestone occurred in 2007 when the number of people in urban areas exceeded the number in rural areas. 35
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Figure 3. Strategic Intelligence: World Economic Forum
Relationships between humans and nature The relationship between humans and nature is an intertwined issue in many disciplines, such as environmental science, zoology, biology, philosophy, ethics, anthropology, ecology, and so on. Examining the relationship between man and nature from a single disciplinary perspective may lead to partial discovery while ignoring other relevant sources, as well as the interrelationships, causality, complexity of processes, and relationships. So I will consider the relationship between people and plants in the contexts of evolutionary biology, social economics, evolutionary psychology, and environmentalism. The relationship between man and nature is an ever-evolving process, as Engels pointed out: “Man is a product of nature, developed in and with his environment.� In the final analysis, human activities are determined by natural conditions. That’s why people fear nature, deify nature, worship nature. Human lives are dominated by powerful and uncompromising connections to nature. 37
Figure 4. Atlas of Emotions homepage, Paul Ekman
Data Visualization and Feelings
in the emotional ring, the more similar your feelings.
Data visualization is the best way for users to understand plant emotions. In 1980, psychologist Robert Plutchik put forward the concept of the famous emotional wheel, using graphics and colors to show the eight basic emotions humans possess: love, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, expectation. For each feeling, it expands to three levels, and a total of 24 primary emotions are formed—the closer to the inner circle, the more intense the emotion. The closer you are
Besides, using the characteristics of this wheel, some new emotions can also be recombined from these 24 emotions: such as “love = pleasure + trust,” and “jealous = sadness + anger.” With the help of these basic psychological models, emotion quantification has become possible in both academia and engineering. More and more emotion models are emerging, which further strengthens the development of emotion visualization. So the designer uses this emotion wheel to apply it to the visualization of plant emotions. This
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Figure 5. Atlas of Emotions homepage, Paul Ekman
can quantify the emotional feedback of the plant, making it easier for the plant holder to understand and sympathize with the plant. We can predict the future personality development of the plant-based on the combined pattern of emotions. The designers/firms working in this territory at the moment are Eight Bit Studios and the GrowIt company . Their responses to it include products like the plant community, a mobile plant app, a blog, and systems solutions to increase
user knowledge of plants. They also include services/experiences like the garden event. Previous design ideas/ solutions in this territory include helping thousands of people identify plants and learn about what grows in their region. What’s useful about these examples is that people share their gardens to inspire more growth, promote plants they love, and help others steer clear of plants that don’t grow very well. Nobody has yet tried to cure plant blindness in most people completely. 39
Species will be crossed in the future of evolution The founder of GMO art is Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac. In his latest work, “Nature’s Natural History,” he implanted his DNA into the red stem of a flower. He named this work “Pinmal,” a mix of plant and animal. Life on earth has undergone 4 billion years of evolution, and plant characteristics and animal characteristics have been distinguished at an early stage. The meaning of this work is not only to challenge the growth of plants and humans for 4 billion years, but more importantly how the boundaries between species will be crossed in the future of evolution.
Humans have always placed themselves at the top of the biological pyramid, But people should not have hierarchical pyramids, and instead should construct a horizontal spectrum of life. In such a horizontal scope, we are all part of a living community. We are building a network of life, not a subordinate relationship; all living bodies can share and accept each other.
From an evolutionary perspective, humans are genetically modified species. The point is correct that transgenics are unnatural but incomplete. Even without human intervention, changes in genes from one species to another are part of the wild world. Even the genomes that have evolved from viruses and bacteria to humans have a long history of evolution; we have DNA from non-human organisms in our bodies, so that means we are genetically modified. Also, scientific research has found that bacterial cells in the human body outnumber human cells by a factor of ten. For example, we have about ten billion cells, but there are about one hundred billion bacterial cells in our body. We are both genetically modified and bacterial parasitic species, so in this case, do you still find this human/animal hybrid flower strange? 40
Figure 6. Eduardo Kac watering Edunia, 2009. Photo: Joy Lengyel.
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Figure 7. What to do in a Moral Dilemma, 2009. Michael Thompson
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Ethics is a variable gene We used to recognize ethics as a process of human development. We classified it as a relationship composed of humanities, sociology, history and culture, life customs, interpersonal relationships, etc. We worked out guidelines that everyone had to follow. Within these boundaries, the relationships between people and other species was established. During experiments, some scientists discovered that whether it is an animal or a person, ethics is not just a question of the humanities, but a rule and norm formulated by humans through social practice and interpersonal relationships for thousands of years. Scientists discovered a genetic basis for ethics, and people’s emotions, responsibilities, and love can be found in the genome. Therefore, I believe that ethics is not just some ethical norms formulated by social history and cultural customs.
It is inherently a physical substance and has ethical and moral standards that are biological and natural. In this case, ethics and norms will change, and as society develops, people’s understanding of this issue will change accordingly.
Moving Forward Therefore, the direction of this thesis reconstructs the human mindset of defining plant value. We shouldn’t be discouraged even though millions of urban millennial residents have difficulty entering and enjoying nature. The goal of my thesis is to help people redefine the relationship between people and plants by learning to grow with plants.
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“ Working with plants will teach you all other social commitments in a soothing way.” — Karthikeyan V / Founder of Horticultural Therapy Healing Center
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Design Thinking 46
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At a time when millions of urban millennial dwellers find it difficult to get out into nature and enjoy it, how can we use design to help us recognize and understand plant blindness in our daily life? The challenge I encountered was how to use the user’s instinctual awareness and daily behavior and habits to design a solution without adding new usage rules. I wanted the product to change the user’s behavior patterns. How do I balance the restrictions imposed by law and ethics on my design during the design process? How can I make the plantilsm more popular? Then, I ask myself who is directly affected by this challenge/problem? Who else might be part of the problem or solution? I find that I do not aim to solve the problem but to let my users discover the design of the problem. I hope to give urban millennial dwellers a new understanding of plant blindness and to cure their plant blindness by redefining the relationship between plants and people. My designs are for urban residents between 20 and 35 years old in 2060. Also, In cities, botanical gardens, organizations that study plant science, designers, companies selling plants, will all become my secondary users. They can help me spread the knowledge of users from the entire plant sales and promotion channels and treat the influence of plant ideas. Throughout the user analysis, I found that DINKcouples, which stands for “double income and no kids”,still wanted a sense of company. Plants can meet this demand. And there are fewer and 48
fewer American students studying botany, and universities have stopped storing or manufacturing specimens due to funding constraints. People’s understanding of plants will diminish, and it will affect conservation work and even hinder the development of alternative energy sources and medicinal herbs. According to a report from the National Science Foundation (NSF), since 1988 the number of universities offering botanical degrees in the United States has been halved; the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) said that less than 400 doctoral degrees in Botany were awarded in 2012. The reason is that students tend to choose sciencerelated majors. Botanists worry that if this continues, no one in the future may understand how to teach, identify and use plants. Therefore, increasing the students’ knowledge of plants in high school can affect the probability of students studying botany when choosing a university major.
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Why does design matter? As a designer, I have adopted a method for addressing plant blindness that does not aim to solve problems, but allows users to discover problems through creating experiences. To create an experience, my designs should not only consider the current needs of users in feeding plants, but also use the value of plants to affect the user's consciousness, and ultimately achieve a balanced relationship between plants and people. Designers look for entry points. When millions of urban millennial dwellers find it difficult to get out into nature and enjoy it, how can we use design to help us recognize and understand plant blindness in our daily lives? Feedback gives designers insight into the core goals that the designs are modeling. In this way, designers can cultivate concepts and carry out meaningful creativity to solve problems, such as helping users discover their plant blindness and making them want to combat their plant blindness actively.
Speculative Design "Not to solve the problem, but to let you find the design of the problem," is how we define Speculative Design. Unlike problem-oriented design, this process will stimulate people's followup discussions on design and specific topics. Its essence is a stimulus, not the final design itself. Thinking from 50
the perspective of the meaning of the future product can point out its impact on society, the environment, and politics. The aim is to imagine possible futures and products, not just realistic ones. In the context of plant blindness, people who live separated from nature need to establish a new image of a relationship with plants. Design can give them a new language, a modern imagination to illustrate what kind of relationship this relationship may and must become. As modern life becomes increasingly urbanized, people stop growing plants and start keeping them to support their physical and mental health, or to make their apartments cozier. Urban people are increasingly approaching plant ownership as they would pet ownership. How will the relationship between humans and plants change under the new demands of users? Considering the speculative future of plants, if current users value plants more, then designers can imagine a utopian future in which plants have the same characteristics as humans, and can express their emotions in the same ways. The way of caring for plants may become more like parenting children. Under these possible circumstances, are you still not interested in plants? Do you still think that plants are only human appendages?
Design Thinking The process of design research is useful for observing and understanding issues from another perspective or angle using innovative methods. Design thinking includes multiple methods, including:
Understand Empathy: Empathy is the ability to empathize with others' feelings or emotions. This method requires a second study of books and articles to understand how users define their relationships with plants. Through current social platforms in the plant community, I interviewed subject matter experts such as plant sellers and plant-centered workers as primary research to obtain their definition of the relationship between people and plants. The majority of users think about the value of plants in their lives. Talking to plant owners helped make me aware of the pain points of the user experience. Define: Defining the problem that needs to be addressed and designed around. Through interviews, one can understand the actual needs of people in specific activities. One method is to focus on the verbs or activities mentioned by the interviewees when talking about their problems. When I was interviewing my users, most people said that they
found the feeling of keeping pets and plants gave them an adult sense of responsibility. Some experts said that they were curious if plants would be able to understand language like pets. I realized that plant owners didn't just want to feel more adult. They also wanted to use low-cost feeding methods to find a sense of responsibility and belonging. After the analysis, I formulated a problem statement: Urban dwellers are afraid of loneliness. They want long-term companionship and a sense of belonging.
Explore Ideate: Pay attention to the problem statement and put forward ideas to solve the problem. I focused on learning about the user's mindset and designing a set of services to bring them a positive experience, sketched multiple iterations to visually list possible solutions that could be made and assisted together with a new set of service mechanisms. Prototyping I thought about how my designs could fit into people's real lives. My solution was to a new idea and an already used one. Then I connected the points, outlined the final solution, and built a real prototype for testing.
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“ Like people, plants respond to extra attention.” —Peter Loewer / Author of The Evening Garden
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P V E P E C. System Plant Visualize Emotional Perception Expression Communication System The Plant Visualization Emotion Perception Expression Communication system is a new system for establishing visual communication between plants and humans.
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P V E P E C. System Synthesis Plant Visualize Emotional Perception Expression Communication System follows the principle of biological growth. Plants convert light energy into chemical energy based on photosynthesis and release chemical energy by promoting the activity of organisms. Five sensory genes that are from highly sensitive human genes are added to plant cells. This is named chlorophyll expression or emotional gene editing. Then continuously enhancing the response of plant cells to the corresponding characteristics of different psychological aspects. Plant cells can produce human psychology, Emotional expression memory corresponding to emotional expression. At the same time, during plant growth, plant cells respond to them with the most active expression of the five senses based on highly sensitive human genes. Finally, the perception of plant emotions transforms into a human-understandable expression of visual emotion perception during the growth of plants. The means of communication convey changes in plant emotions through variations in color, changes in surface texture, changes in odor, changes in plant dynamic patterns.
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P V E P E C. System Conclusion We are only a small part of nature. We cannot communicate intuitively with plants, but that doesn’t mean that plants do not have insight into human psychology. Through Plant Visualize Emotional Perception Expression Communication System, people will understand the needs of plants more clearly. And it will also provide favorable conditions for establishing a friendly relationship between people and plants. Plant Visualize Emotional Perception Expression Communication System provides technical support for the plantlism lab.
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The plantlism Lab Choice Speculative Project Case Study This case study explores new ways of communication between plants and people. It uses individual DNA from people for breeding your plant child. Users can make their plant's character similar to their own and can intervene manually with the plant's growth environment to make the plant's personality grow into the character you like. The goal is to try and treat plants in new ways and see them from new perspectives.
Overview In 2060, the ecological balance was severely damaged. Plants have developed consciousness and senses similar to humans and began to fight back against them. People desperately want to understand plants and to reestablish a new friendly ecological relationship. The plantlism lab has created the Plant Visualize Emotional Perception Expression Communication System for people and plants to communicate. People can use the app which is named Be Smart, With Plant to simulate the method of teaching a child to cultivate their plant child.
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The opportunity Humans naturally want to be close to nature. But humans develop in ways that destroy the environment. The laboratory researching the Plant Visualize Emotional Perception Expression Communication System hopes to create a model that can help people and plants communicate. Since arriving in the hands of the public, it has dramatically improved the ecological balance for many nations. People are less lonely and spend more time in nature. Alexia, a researcher at the plantlism lab, believes the Plantlism Lab helps the digital generation to be more attuned to their natural environments.
Branding The tone of voice for the plantlism lab is clear and direct. Its message is to be transparent about what it is. They combine the shape of plants and text to give users a new visual definition of the ecological relationship between humans and plants.
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Think Green, Dream Green. The Lab Since our founding in 2060, The Plantlism Lab has helped countless local customers to start or cultivate a garden of their own. Our main goal here is to make you understand how beautiful nature is through the use of plants and trees. We have established a website for the Plantism Laboratory. On the website, we provide services such as plant sales, horticultural education video courses, and plant community communication. We also opened an entertainment area of the laboratory. You can bring your book and coffee on the weekend to immerse yourself in the plant-filled space and enjoy plant therapy.
The Outcome The popularity of plant cell editing technology has made the Plantlism Lab the number one plant seller worldwide. People enjoy communicating with plants. Plants are like pets, helping alleviate the loneliness of urban people. Most urban residents are eager to get this new emotional sustenance, so the Plantlism Lab’s products are selling well. Growing plants from seeds that can express their emotions have increased the happiness of urban residents, promoted the idea of people having children, and reduced
the rate of urban suicide. All in all, expressive plants from the Plantlism Lab help people pay attention to plants and removes the fear that your plant kids will abandon you as well. The Plantlism Lab is here to stay with us forever.
Moving Forward This might sound like an ethics violation. But it is not. Humans and plants are still different species, but we can communicate in a way that each of us can understand. We can realize the twoway evolutionary development of plants and humans if we extract the human genes that control our senses and put them into plants. But we still need to refine the whole process. Most human neglect of plants is based on three pain points. First, plants cannot move, and human eyes more easily notice moving objects. Second, plants and humans have different growth systems, and humans are not primed to be too interested in unknown species. Third, plants look very different from human beings. There are specialized nerve cells in the human brain to recognize human faces. This shows that plants having a similar appearance to humans would also help humans pay more attention to plants.
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Miniature Pot Making a tiny forest be with you. Reflection 3DPD Project An electronic flower pot for people between the ages of 20 and 35 in 2060 to carry plants around. Users can use this flower pot to detect the emotional changes of plants and can use it in combination with the app to affect the personality growth of plants. Flower pots and apps allow you to customize your own plant kids' personalities.
Overview Millions of Instagram posts are tagged#plantsofinstagram, #urbanjungle, and #plantlife, and it is clear that people are interested in plants. However, unlike other consumer trends such as fashion and beauty, the benefits of growing and caring for indoor plants far exceed the benefits we may accumulate on social media. Millennials who live in a rental apartment in the city and are not ready to raise pets or children are buying indoor plants at a record rate. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, sales of seeds, flowers, and potted plants have increased. Also, unlike buying other decorative objects such as candles, pillows, or artworks can also bring functional social significance, plants are alive and require continuous 76
care. This sense of responsibility, that is, the happiness they feel when growing and multiplying, even just around plants, has unique health implications for our physical and mental health, which may be particularly fascinating for people in 2060.
Time for reflection People between the ages of 20 and 35 like to buy plants. Some people are terrible plant parents. About 70% of the plants they bring into their apartment die within two months. Buying plants will only make them feel responsible. They have no follow-up action, and they are awful at remembering to water them. 77
The product The Miniature Pot is a portable smart pot that can detect changes in plant mood. This flower pot is small and light. The user can put in their backpack or hang on their bag. They can take their plants wherever they want. This also meets the inherent needs of human beings who want to be close to nature every day. The pot’s second function is to detect the emotional changes in plants. This flower pot needs to be used with the app. The pot will convert all the emotional changes of the plant into data and send it to the app, which will give the user weekly plant growth reports plus a database for the plant’s personality.
Who it is for Miniature Pot is for urban dwellers between the ages of 20 and 35 in 2060 to give them a new way of taking care of their plants. Users do not have to worry about the habitual neglect of plants and insufficient care of plants, because they will be at their side, and they can take it with them everywhere. Users can carry plants wherever to reduce other unnecessary expenses caused by wanting to be close to nature.
The Package The package includes an instruction manual and a flower pot with a lid. This flower pot is made of plastic mixed with glass. This increases the 78
wear resistance of the glass while also ensuring a transparent texture. The flower pot is equipped with a hemp rope. The user can cut the length of the hemp rope according to the size of their bag. After that, tie the hemp rope to the cover of the flower pot. You can hang the flower pot on the bag. The color of the product and packaging will be light green. It allows users to have a natural visual experience around them.
Promotion There are two main ways of promotion. First, we will cooperate with Internet celebrities on Instagram to promote products and place Instagram ads on social media. Secondly, we will launch products and personalized, customized flower pots when users download the app.
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Be Smart, With Plant Feel like a “plant �parent.
Overview
The objective
In the future, we will equate plant care with self care and environmentalism. .We also want to add a little green to the dreary apartments that many of us call home. But some plant holders say that plants make them feel like adults. When the traditional signs of adulthood, like marriage, homeownership, and children are delayed or unreachable, it is gratifying to go home and appease things that depend on you.
This is a speculative design. Be Smart, With Plant is an app that trains plant emotions. The purpose is to help users more easily understand the current emotional state of the plant, and the personality of the training plant will continue to grow as the user likes.
Therefore Be Smart, With Plant app, intends to help users become better plant parents. This doesn’t just help users better understand and take care of plants and create a new ecological relationship, but also to satisfy urban residents in simulating parental feelings in advance, reducing the stress and loneliness of urban residents.
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How might we build an app to create new communication between humans and plants?
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The Opportunity Utilizing the hill statement method and the “who what wow�, it helps describe: Who the project was for, why is it important to have this, and what would get them engaged in trying it out. So for this app: The Who are future young urban dwellers who want to be prospective parents but feel that they don't have enough capacity to shoulder that responsibility. The inspiration for Be Smart, With Plant stems from the continuation of my pre-designed case.
Pain points: Plant owners don't understand the expression of plants. Some plants don’t get adequate care. Plants and people need emotional sustenance from each other.
The objective This is a speculative design. Be Smart, With Plant is an app that trains plant emotions. The purpose is to help users more easily understand the current emotional state of the plant, and the personality of the training plant will continue to grow as the user likes.
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Process An area that is critical in the design process of obtaining useful insights is user testing in this process. I created a questionnaire to test out the features of the app and test out my initial assumption with the question: would people want to use this?
Target participants : The target participants are urban millennial dwellers, who are interested in owning plants but don’t currently have any. Qualitative things to learn during testing: Can people be comfortable with the extraction of their DNA to cultivate plant seeds containing their personality genes? What are the issues that users are most concerned about in the process of feeding plants? If plants could express their emotions through behavior, would users have new demands for plants? Moving forward into the process, it was important to test out other core questions. Would people feel comfortable when they communicate with plants? Are people willing to do this thing? Which combination of colors, smells, textures, and sounds is most popular with users? 88
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Insights Most people would not reject the idea of giving genes to plants to cultivate plant emotions. Plants can simulate pet ownership to satisfy the loneliness of users. Users feel that this kind of behavior is like the real growth of a child. 91
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Outcome This app is a product helping users and plants establish a new way of communication. As they use the app, users will develop a new intimate relationship with plants. We translate the plant language that the user can't understand into the visual language module selected by the user, and help the user to design the preferred visual language into the plant cultivation process. This will help users and plants better understand the intentions of both parties. This new way of communication will not only help any plant to be in harmony with its owner. In the process of feeding plants, users will experience a new companionship. Plants can satisfy your lack in a particular area. Many modern youths have an inner feeling of emptiness and loneliness. As loneliness grows stronger, companionship gradually becomes a need. The Plant Child intervened in this process. This new relationship will also cause people to think: Is the plant still a plant? 93
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The Double Flower Nightclub is a plant night club that gives you a new understanding of plants using play, music, and movement.
Double Flower Nightclub Green Rock
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Double Flower Nightclub is an art project that pushes the entire paper to the next important issue. It asks: when plants have similar emotions to humans, are they still plants? Double flower nightclub aims to create an open space for people to communicate with plants physically, and let users redefine plants in the process. The people who live in the city are busy with work and life every day and are increasingly indifferent to the surrounding environment and their loved ones. We encourage people
to break their daily thinking and visual patterns and feel the new problems caused by new feelings. This is a tiny nightclub. When people enter the space, they will enjoy the atmospheric music and lights. This is the same as an ordinary nightclub. When the user starts to swing their body with the music, the plants will also move from all directions, and the branches will swing their bodies as the user’s body moves. It’s like the plants are dancing with the user. There is value in dancing with a plant. We altered the plants to make them more familiar to humans, which causes people to rethink the definition of plants.
This nightclub belongs to the plantlism lab. We hope we can provide a complete set of services. When you browse our website, we not only sell products, but we also want to build a plant community. In this ecological community, our questions can be answered, we share our knowledge and feelings about plants, and we observe the world with plants.
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Gae Savannah Botanical Artist New York, NY
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“ Don't just use human thinking to think about plant thinking. Don't only try to change the behavior of humans to seek a balanced relationship between human and plants.�
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Conclusion A person's ability to listen and understand the needs of plants may be directly proportional to their ability to listen and understand people's feelings. Plants do not speak but express their response to external stimuli all the time. In the book The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination, it is mentioned that early humans often connected themself to images with animals. For example, shamans could see guardian animals or directly transform into animals, but they were not considered "Live." Plants often push people to change the environment and history intelligently. Although the "calculating" statement is playful, it describes the fact that plants have impacted human civilization. German Arborist Peter. Worley Ben's "Das geheime Leben der Bäume" and "Bäume verstehen: Was uns Bäume erzählen, wie wir sie naturgemä pflegen "show more brilliant content. He uses scientific language to write that trees have the same memory, pain, energy, and perception of kinship relationships as humans, but also points out that trees and humans are different species. Even if we use analogies and anthropomorphic methods to narrow our understanding of trees and plants, it does not mean that the value of the human center still holds. Is a slowmoving creature naturally lower than an agile one? Sometimes I wonder whether people agree that plants and animals are
similar in many ways and should we give plans and other vegetables a little more respect? Biology has a concept called biophilia, which means a love for living things. No matter where we are, we cannot resist our draw towards nature. This is an evolved nature that helps us survive. Although the “man-made era” is full of artificial environments and manufactured construction materials today, biophilia has not disappeared. Many high tech products pay more attention to nature. More and more scientific research results prove that biophilia has an essential influence on human physical, mental health, and physical performance. Good biophilia design points the way for modern humans to create healthy and efficient habitats. We are called to build a different world, and we have the opportunity to build a better world, where humans and nature will develop together rather than confront each other.
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Acknowledgments PoD Faculty Allan Chochinov Andrew Schloss Jennifer Rittner Emilie Baltz Steven Dean Brent Arnold Sinclair Smith KT Gillette Hannah Calhoon Bill Cromie Rachel Abrams Marc Dones Elizabeth Galbut Daniel Perlin Rob Walker Paola Antonelli Hlynur Atlason Kathleen Bakewell Claire Hartten Ayse Birsel Mattew Borgatti Michael Chung Andrew Dent Jennifer Dunnam Jason Severs Sigi Moeslinger Masamichi Udagawa Toshi Mogi Rebecca Silver 116
Becky Stern Manuel Toscano Richard Tyson James Wynn Lawrence Abrahamson
PoD Staff Marko Manriquez Kristina Lee Elspeth Walker
VFL Staff John Heida Oya Kosebay Tak Cheung Chester Dols Elizabeth Meiklejohn Anne-Marie Lavigne Bronwen Densmore Maya Ragazzo
Class of 2020 Victoria Ayo Anna Chau Helen Chen Stephanie Gamble Bart Haney
Seona Joung Yuko Kanai Yue Leng Shin Young Park Pantea Parsa Weston Rivell Theodore Scoufis Catherine Stoddard Yufei Wang Sherry Wu Elvis Yang Hui Zheng
Tzu Ching Lin Yangying Ye
Friends & Family Xinru Ma (the writer of the PVEPEC system) Mei Lu Wenzhi Leng
Class of 2019 Andre Orta Antya Waegmann Ben Bartlett Carly Simmons Ellen Rose Eugenia Ramos Alonso Evie Cheung Gustav Dyrhauge Hannah Rudin John Boran Jr. Micah Lynn Phuong Anh Nguyen Qixuan Wang Rhea Bhandari Runshi Wei Sophie Carrillo Miranda 117
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Yue Leng New York yleng@sva.edu