WE ONCE WERE PLANTS

2025 | 3D printed objects| soundscape                         

The  artwork stands as an autonomous node, a variation of Flowerbed (2024-ongoing), persisting after the fall of human civilization. It resembles a sturdy, plastic messenger: a droid designed to safeguard a final message for the planet. Within its translucent body lies a hybrid ecosystem, a pseudo-garden where living plants, scanned weeds, and 3D-printed organisms coexist. It is both alive and artificial, both archive and oracle.

The droid hums softly, transmitting soundscapes generated from personal recordings of urban noise, fragments of sirens, footsteps, machinery. These sounds are filtered through bioacoustic processes in the living plants; leaves translate static into whispers, roots reverberate with echoes of cities now submerged. Random words, buried in the audio, refer to the hidden mycorrhizal networks, the ancient internet of the soil.

Like the mycelial threads beneath forests, this artwork carries coded nutrients of meaning. It is a message for what might come after us: that all life was once a collaboration, a symbiosis of boundaries and exchange. When no one is left to listen, the droid will still murmur its archive to the earth, a testament to our interconnectedness, waiting to be discovered by whatever life evolves next.

text: Eva Papanikolaou

(The installation originates from the ongoing project “Flowerbed”, developed through participatory workshops and ecological field practices.) More at: flowerbed

Collaborators: • Eva Papanikolaou– theoretical dialogue and co-design of participatory workshops • Nikos Thomaidis – sound and biodata integration • Fenia Rizou and studio ecolapsis –   3D visualization and fabrication support • Marianna Roukali, Anna Vlachaki, Sam Biggs – voice & Narration • Nikos Kostopoulos – photography