H
ow many books and bloggers have warned us of the isolation of our digital screens? Of the threat of social media corroding friendships or of virtual reality overriding real life? But here’s the thing about tools: They can harm or they can help. It’s up to the user to make that choice, and immersive experience designer Leily Khatibi knows this better than most. The inspiration for Khatibi’s thesis project at San Jose State (SJSU) arose from her introduction to the concept of the Wood Wide Web—a term scientists use to refer to the underground fungal network that connects the roots of trees and plants, allowing them to communicate and share resources with each other. Fascinated by its striking resemblance to the internet, she realized, “They have their own social media underground. It’s so sci-fi, but it’s a real thing!” This inspired a question: “If the Wood Wide Web and the World Wide Web were to intersect, what types of hybrid/techno-botanic life would take form?” What sort of symbiotic relationship might be cultivated between tech and plants? Putting this thought-experiment to the test, the SJSU grad student conducted a series of experiences. Interconnecting with the Wood Wide Web (WWW.) resulted in workshops, a greenhouse installation, and an interactive exhibition at one of SJSU’s galleries. The workshop part of Khatibi’s project unfolded at Backyard San Jose, a pop-up community garden and event space that temporarily sprang up over the summer in an unassuming downtown lot. If you had signed up as one of her participants, Khatibi would have ushered you over to a long table and supplied you with containers
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of Play-Doh. She would have instructed you to sculpt a techno-botanic plant that might aid a sustainable future, then write a narrative about your creation’s origin and abilities. These could range from a flower that purifies areas affected by power plant radiation to a genetically modified shrub offering an alternative power source. The resulting dough creations—carnivorous or floral, viny or thorny—were placed atop blackand-white, pixelated QR code squares, then 3D scanned. From there, they were uploaded to augmented reality (AR), which, unlike virtual reality, adds to the physical world rather than wipes it out. For viewing, participants stepped over to a small “greenhouse” made of transparent, iridescent plastic the color of a soap bubble and picked up the AR HoloLens headset resting on the platform within. With the apparatus strapped on, participants witnessed the virtual organisms they had “grown” now thriving in the midst of Backyard’s real foliage. “You’re taking storytelling and turning it into storyliving,” Khatibi declares. She also got the greenlight to set up her AR greenhouse among the fronds and ferns of SJSU’s climate-controlled rooftop greenhouse. “It was really meta!” she says. One of her favorite factors of the whole experience? The collaboration—a process that has increasingly progressed to the forefront of her practice. “It wasn’t so much about what my vision was. It was more about how we could collectively create something together…it was a platform for them to bring their own ideas to,” Khatibi says. She also notes that collaboration is implicitly tied to the nature of the internet—an exhaustive number of databases, documents, and other resources
