_SOS v.0.1.0 (Symbiotic Orchid Search)
2025
A plant-machine symbiont; phalaenopsis orchids, semi-water culture ebb and flow hydroponics system, algorithmic programming, digital fabrication, water, light, and sound
Symbiotic Orchid Search is a speculative plant-machine symbiont composed of Phalaenopsis orchids, a semi-water culture hydroponics system, and choreographically programmed light, sound, and water pumps.
Inspired by evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis’ theory of ‘symbiosis,’ Donna Haraway’s concepts of ‘sympoeisis’ and ‘science-art worldings’, and a novel evolutionary algorithm called the Symbiotic Organism Search algorithm, this work explores a shared process of ‘making with’ between plants, humans, and technology to propose an entangled co-evolutionary future for the necessity of survival amid earth’s ecological collapse.
Phalaenopsis orchids are one of the most widely cultivated orchid species in the global plant market today and can be found readily at most stores where plants are available for purchase. Despite their cultivated status, orchids maintain a perception of rarity, and their highly sought after and studied significance within the history of evolutionary and reproductive botanical theory has cemented them as a symbol of heteronormative beauty, desire, wealth, power, trade, and capitalism.
Working from this context, SOS seeks to reroute the orchid’s existing cultural narratives through a speculative queerfeminist processual lens in recognition of the plant’s existing coevolutionary and symbiotic intelligences, while extending this role to its propositional co-habitants - the machine and myself as the gardener.
Within this symbiotic proposition, the work seeks a reconciliation of time between the disparate pacings of the natural, human, and technological, and asks what it means to remain in continuously shifting, adapting, flowing, and looping relation beyond oneself.
Inspired by evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis’ theory of ‘symbiosis,’ Donna Haraway’s concepts of ‘sympoeisis’ and ‘science-art worldings’, and a novel evolutionary algorithm called the Symbiotic Organism Search algorithm, this work explores a shared process of ‘making with’ between plants, humans, and technology to propose an entangled co-evolutionary future for the necessity of survival amid earth’s ecological collapse.
Phalaenopsis orchids are one of the most widely cultivated orchid species in the global plant market today and can be found readily at most stores where plants are available for purchase. Despite their cultivated status, orchids maintain a perception of rarity, and their highly sought after and studied significance within the history of evolutionary and reproductive botanical theory has cemented them as a symbol of heteronormative beauty, desire, wealth, power, trade, and capitalism.
Working from this context, SOS seeks to reroute the orchid’s existing cultural narratives through a speculative queerfeminist processual lens in recognition of the plant’s existing coevolutionary and symbiotic intelligences, while extending this role to its propositional co-habitants - the machine and myself as the gardener.
Within this symbiotic proposition, the work seeks a reconciliation of time between the disparate pacings of the natural, human, and technological, and asks what it means to remain in continuously shifting, adapting, flowing, and looping relation beyond oneself.
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