In the periphery of our perception
“Tropism is a phenomenon of imperfect coincidence and it reveals itself in the periphery of our perception. It is the origin of our gestures.”
I travelled to Amsterdam on an Art+Science research venture at the end of February 2024. I had the opportunity to interview Robin Noorda and Alfred Marseille, artists and founders of the Tropism Art Collective. We talked about their approach to art and science and how they connect with nature, how they envisage people connecting with nature as well as how their extensive work carried out throughout their prolific career has aimed to re connect people with the natural world. The use of technology has always been present in their work and is something they are constantly evolving with. From digital animation, using infrared lighting among plants, film, VR headsets, interactive installations across the world, their work is simply outstanding and I felt so lucky to have the opportunity to talk to them.
Key moments in the conversation with Tropism Art Collective
Below I have outlined some key moments of the interview which I found inspirational as well as useful in terms of how to think about my research project.
Growth driven by darkness
On my interview, one of the questions I asked was about what Tropism means. I was inspired to hear that Tropism is the ability of an organism to direct itself to stimuli. We also talked about plant growth and light. Curiously enough, I was truly inspired to find out that the actual area of a plant that grows harder is the one that is not in direct contact with the light source. This lead me to question: is growth inspired by dark spaces, by what is not actually there?
We are all living beings
We talked about some of the projects the group is working on, one of them involves talking about the forest as an entity instead of a collection of trees, animals, and shrubs. Robin mentioned that this thinking is in part inspired by the concept of Gaia proposed by James Lovelock, who suggests that living organisms on the planet interact with their surrounding inorganic environment to form a synergetic and self-regulating system that created, and now maintains, the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on Earth possible.
This concept encompasses life of on Earth as a complete ecosystem, the world as a living thing.
According to Alfred Marseille, if we look at humanity today and how the world has evolved (or not actually in the right direction) points to humanity as outsiders looking back at life. Alfred mentioned we would like to talk to aliens but we can’t even talk between ourselves. We also touched on the topic of race, and how some people think people of colour as a lesser race. This is a complete backwards thinking. I added to this, that by the simple act of using the word ‘race’ this already makes a differentiation, which is unnecessary, as we are all living beings - we are nature.
Do we need to address the way we communicate among human beings first if we want to change the way we address the rest of the living world (animals, plants, the land, the oceans)?
What the eyes can’t see
photosynthesis [work in progress]
Aliens on our own planet
Looking at how our planet is today, we can acknowledge that humans have taken over the world alongside the breed of animals for human consumption. In the long distant past, it used to be the other way round, domesticated animals and humans were the minimum and wildlife was a big percentage of life on the planet. On my conversation with Robin Noorda, he mentioned we have an opportunity now to do terraforming.
According to a definition found on Cambridge Dictionary [online]: in books, films, or games about an imagined future, to change the environment of a planet so that it is more like another planet, especially so that it is more like Earth and could therefore be a place where humans could live.
Paraphrasing this, if we think about ourselves as aliens on our own planet, how do we transform Earth so we can make it our place to live and thrive again? What if we conceive ourselves more as wildlife rather than simply humans on the planet, separate from nature?
Meeting Nature
In our conversation, I asked Alfred and Robin what nature means to them. Alfred answered that nature is someone you meet, but at the same time is someone you are part of. This made me think that nature is more like meeting our reflection on a mirror. The face is familiar, we feel connected because its our own self we are looking at direct in the eyes. Nature along these lines, feels like its something I knew all along. Although this could be argued depending on how you feel about yourself. I find it interesting to think it in this way as it poses the question of: is nature outside us or within us?
Inviting the viewer to the conversation
We also talked about the interactive installations that they produced locally as well as internationally. Talking about the creation of these experiences one of the key aspects of them, mentioned by the artists themselves, is that experience happens in an indirect way.
Two installations we talked about are:
You lookin' at me? [link]
Sneaky Serpents [link]
Find out more about Tropism on their website https://www.tropism.eu
