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13. IMPLICATIONS & APPLICATIONS

(UN)ROOTED

CONCEPT

What It Is About

Unrooted is an interactive art installation that explores the contemporary meaning of rootedness and belonging in an age of mobility, digital interconnection, and shifting identities. The work creates a sensory and reflective space where visitors can physically and emotionally explore what it means to feel grounded.

Through a combination of organic materials, interactive technology, and collective participation, it seeks to make the processes through which people connect—to place, to others, and to themselves—visible and tangible.

Background

In a time of constant change, where living environments, identities, and social reference points are continuously shifting, the question of rootedness becomes existential. The installation responds to the growing sense of displacement and fragmentation caused by high mobility, frequent relocation, and digital mediation.

It emerges from my own experience of feeling both connected and uprooted—of belonging everywhere and nowhere at once. From this tension arises the central question: How do we root ourselves in motion?

Rootedness here is not seen as a static state tied to geography, but as an evolving process formed through interaction, shared experiences, and emotional presence. Between belonging and alienation, movement and stillness, Unrooted creates a space to explore the nuances of arrival, foreignness, and connection.

Research Focus

My conceptual focus lies in the intersection of art, technology, and botany—translating physical experience into digital presence and linking corporeality with digital visualization.

The work examines how tactile, human impulses continue to exist and become visible in digital space, forming a new kind of rootedness: not as static belonging, but as a living, multilayered relationship between human, nature, and technology.

REALIZATION

Structure

The central element of the installation is the collective root blanket, composed of many individual root squares grown by participants. Embedded touch and proximity sensors transform physical interaction into digital and auditory responses.

Next to the blanket, a projection displays a continually evolving image of root growth—possibly on a hanging fabric surface or directly on the floor—extending the physical roots into a digital dimension. The combination of living material and projected imagery creates an immersive and meditative atmosphere where growth becomes both visible and tangible.

Inastallation Set up - AI generated image

Project Components

Participatory Process

  • Participants receive root-growing kits with seeds and a parametric mold designed according to variables such as distance from Amsterdam or age.
  • They cultivate the roots in these forms and send them back, contributing their unique piece to the collective root blanket.
  • The individual root squares are assembled into a single interconnected textile symbolizing shared grounding and community.

Interactivity

The work combines organic materials and sensor technology to create a dynamic system that reacts to presence and touch:

  • Proximity Sensor: The closer one comes, the louder and more intense the sound of growth becomes—like a living organism responding to attention.
  • Touch Sensor: Each touch generates new, random root structures in the projection, making the digital roots expand, mutate, and overlap in unpredictable ways.

Visitors can physically engage with the blanket—touching, standing beside it, or even covering themselves with it—transforming observation into an embodied experience. Each encounter leaves a trace, both physically and digitally.

Installation Layout

The installation space is conceived as an intimate and immersive environment:

  • The collective root blanket lies in the center as the main interface of interaction.
  • The projection is positioned beside it, either on a fabric surface or on the floor, visually extending the roots outward.
  • The combination of sound, light, and motion creates a slowly transforming atmosphere of presence, vulnerability, and connection.

Tools and Materials

  • Rhino / Grasshopper – Creation of parametric molds and forms.
  • 3D Printing – Fabrication of molds for root growth.
  • Arduino – Sensor integration (touch and proximity).
  • TouchDesigner – projection and visualization.
  • E-textiles & Sensor Systems – Linking physical interaction and digital response.
  • Biomaterials – Cultivation and growth of living roots.

Project Aims

On a conceptual level, the project addresses the human experience of disconnection and transience. It invites participants to reflect, slow down, and reconnect—both with themselves and with others.

On a personal level, my goals are to:

  • Master Rhino/Grasshopper for parametric design.
  • Learn Arduino sensor integration (touch/proximity).
  • Explore TouchDesigner for visualization.
  • Grow roots in parametric shapes and integrate them into interactive systems.

INSPIRATION

Inspiring projects on roots

  1. Grown Exploration - Jacob Olmedo

  2. Root Systems - Carole Collet

  3. Rootful - Zenna Holloway

  4. AMBER GRAIN EMBROIDERY - Barbara Rakovska

  5. Apical - Diana Scherer

Inspiring projects on the intersection of art, technology & botany/texitles

  1. The orchid beauty, 2023 - Volkan Dincer : a cyborg orchid survives on Instagram likes, revealing the ironic entanglement of ecology, social media, and the beauty industry.

  2. A Fabric that Remembers - Laura Devendorf - fabric that remembers where and how it was pressed with a tablet to visualize touch in realtime.

  3. Of Work And Waves - Mika Satomi & Hannah Perner-Wilson - was a participatory public intervention by KOBAKANT, in which crocheters collaboratively handcraft a copper-thread antenna, intertwining traditional craft, collective labor, and the invisible presence of electromagnetic waves.