ABSTRACT
Soybeans occupy a critical space at the intersection of environmental challenges, national policies and emerging technologies. Our new media art installation, Algorithmic Gardening, uses soybeans to imagine an agricultural future that is autonomous, natural and robotic. The installation’s key works—Soybots: Robotanic Micro-Gardens (a small fleet of self-guided soybean plants) and The Algorithmic Gardener: Tales of Future Natures and Code (a weed-picking robot with computer vision capabilities) raise questions of mobility, infrastructure and hybridity. In this case, mobility is generated by algorithm-defined behaviors and implies new infrastructural arrangements prescribed by nature/technology or human/machine hybridity. With this in mind, we speculate how perceptual differences and hybrid ways of navigating reveal a future of novel infrastructure and architecture for algorithmic agriculture. We investigate ontological questions about how machines become visually aware of their environment and to which degree this awareness is shaped by human action and culture. Using genetically modified soybeans and machine-cultivated gardens as examples, we conclude with a discussion of hybrid objects as a strategy for making visible otherwise invisible technological interventions in “nature.” By actively engaging in this type of critical artistic creation, it is our ultimate goal to help publics narrate, debate and respond to emerging future natures.
