KIDNETIC GARDEN
DeTour 2021, Hong Kong
The kidnetic garden is a designed world in which people are not the sole actors of the built environment, but plants too. It challenges how we perceive the “normality” of our surroundings; and through the peculiar movements of plants, what we might perceive as “abnormality”. Our curiosity is awakened, which is arguably the greatest source of creativity.
On a dance floor painted in colours inspired by waltz movements stand four robotic planters containing flora commonly found in Hong Kong. As visitors draw closer, motion sensors cause the planters to move and sway in a new form of dance—a dialogue between plants, users and design.
Here, abnormality becomes one epitome of usefulness. Can a dancing plant distract children from learning “the norm” and encourage them to learn by knowing? When they step out of the kidnetic garden, children will hopefully begin to seek the abnormal within the norm. Curiosity, rather than usefulness, may sustain them beyond the end of the dance.
KIDNETIC GARDEN
The kidnetic garden is a designed world in which people are not the sole actors of the built environment, but plants too. It challenges how we perceive the “normality” of our surroundings; and through the peculiar movements of plants, what we might perceive as “abnormality”. Our curiosity is awakened, which is arguably the greatest source of creativity.
On a dance floor painted in colours inspired by waltz movements stand four robotic planters containing flora commonly found in Hong Kong. As visitors draw closer, motion sensors cause the planters to move and sway in a new form of dance—a dialogue between plants, users and design.
Here, abnormality becomes one epitome of usefulness. Can a dancing plant distract children from learning “the norm” and encourage them to learn by knowing? When they step out of the kidnetic garden, children will hopefully begin to seek the abnormal within the norm. Curiosity, rather than usefulness, may sustain them beyond the end of the dance.