Botanical Alchemy
People always anticipate witnessing wonders, often expecting a visible catastrophe to acknowledge that something is amiss. However, reality isn't always a dramatic apocalyptic scene. Even in the most ordinary landscapes, there exists alienation—something subtle, beneath the surface, and hard to perceive. So, how can we make these hidden alienations tangible and perceptible?
This project builds upon the methodology employed in the artwork "Leaves," where the metal content within plant bodies is translated into colors through glazing. This process transforms the variation in plant glaze colors into an "indicator" for assessing changes in metal elements in the environment. Glazes with a slight metal content tend towards transparency, while those with a higher content exhibit more intense colors. The same plant species in different environments contains varying amounts of heavy metals, and different plants on the same piece of land exhibit different tolerances to heavy metals. This project, envisioned as a long-term investigation, seeks to comprehend the distribution of plants and their heavy metal enrichment in diverse locations, ultimately creating a comprehensive "plant metal mine" map. The investigation encompasses not only explicitly polluted areas but also seemingly ordinary locations around people.
The project records details such as the plant name and collection location for each glaze in an archival manner. In the final presentation, there's a preference for a more sensorially stimulating approach. For instance, suspending them to produce sounds like wind chimes, allowing people to hear and see the plants around them in a new way.