The Unwanted Ecology

This self-sustainable sound biosphere consists of weed plants, which have been collected, in a 20min-walking radius from my studio, which is based on a paddy field in North Goa. Goa lies in the Western Ghats (also known as Sahyadri meaning The Benevolent Mountains) is a mountain range that runs parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the eight “hottest hot-spots” of biological diversity in the world and has over 7,402 species of flowering plants, 1,814 species of non-flowering plants, 139 mammal species, 508 bird species, 179 amphibian species, 6,000 insects species, and 290 freshwater fish species; it is likely that many undiscovered species live in the Western Ghats. At least 325 globally threatened species occur in the Western Ghats.
This electronic glass-encased biosphere contains twenty unwanted plants termed often as “Weed”, powered by a solar panel. Each Weed plant in the bottle has been converted into their own sound frequency, which is layered by white noise that modulates in sound levels with a change of humidity. This book, which carries information about the plant’s medicinal/nutritional and other applications, accompanies the interactive self-sustainable biosphere. It also contains weed recipes that can be incorporated in our daily life.
“A weed is a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation, “a plant in the wrong place”. Examples commonly are plants unwanted in human-controlled settings, such as farm fields, gardens, lawns, and parks. The term also is applied to any plant that grows or reproduces aggressively or is invasive outside its native habitat. “Weed” occasionally is applied pejoratively to species outside the plant kingdom, species that can survive in diverse environments and reproduce quickly; in this sense, it has even been applied to humans.”-wiki. This statement led me to create a symbiotic relationship between them. If a plant that can tolerate high temperatures flourish in the least amount of water, aggressively spread without much care, and have nutritional/medicinal benefits, it would be a benefit on a global level.
Ethnobotany is the study of the relationship between plants and people. Quite a number of plants considered as weeds in modern sciences have significant value in ethnobotany. Weeds are very common, dominant, and widespread in the crop fields and also seen in a lot of urban cities. Imagine if we could walk out from our homes pick up a medicinal weed for our ailments that are growing in a common park in a major urban city. The awareness of potent medicines that lie in our backyards and rejected by us on a daily basis due to lack of knowledge could change a dynamic of urban and rural scapes. Local medicine healers are disappearing without much documentation of this ancient research. Though research work on medicinal plants has intensified, our human ecology still hasn’t deeply explored its relationship to these plants that are rejected by our human ecology on a day-to-day basis.
I also see the possibility of this project expanding with every city this piece travels to. To collect local weeds and document their medicinal/nutritional properties would work towards increasing local understanding of their own surroundings.