Blooming Connection
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Blooming Connection was a project exploring the coexistence between humans and pollinators in urban environments. It is designed to promote awareness to humans about the pollinators’ population decline as well as aid in a better understanding of human harmony and coexistence with nature. The wearable is designed to attract hummingbirds and other pollinators to them and act as rest areas for pollinators in large urban environments, as many pollinators are finding themselves traveling further and further to find the variety of nectar they need. Blooming Connection can sense when a pollinator is near and will produce nectar for them to feed on.
Blooming Connection is wearable and acts as a provocatype to trigger awareness to other humans about the pollinators’ situations. The person wearing Blooming Connection is also more aware of the relationship between humans and animals and acts as a bridge between flora and fauna. This strengthens the idea that communication is connection and aids in humans understanding the complex and multi-sensory communications people normally cannot perceive.
This project allowed the exploration of interspecies empathizing as Blooming Connection has the outward appearance of a flower and the wearer must also move as little as possible. These two aspects combine to put the user into the role of a plant to help the pollinators. Another learning that was gained from the project was a caveat to the phrase “form follows function”, during the exploration of the senses it was found that it was more helpful to start with a form and then use that to narrow down on the focal functions.
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Project was part of CIID curriculum.
Created by:
Christoff Trexler
Martin Altanie
Richard Wecker
Shin Ooi
