Treeborg
The Treeborg project took root in January of 2024 as a speculative design project exploring the line between the grown and the built. It grew to also touch on ideas of design for non-human organisms. The project developed into the series of prototypes you see here.
This project has been showcased in the Rhode Island School of Design 2024 Grad Show and the MIT Museum “After Dark: Grow” event. It was also awarded the 2024 Outstanding Capstone Project Award by Brown School of Engineering.
The functionality of the Treeborg prototypes varies greatly depending on what code they are running. For the RISD Grad Show, due to lack of wifi in the convention center, the treeborgs were running a simplified program meant to convey the essence of the idea.
The smaller “plantenna” treeborg is able to pick up on ambient electromagnetic signals representing it “tuning in” to our world. This also allows it to sense human touch. It sends all of the data it collects to the larger “mother treeborg” who, upon word of nearby humans from the plantenna, will have her network of smaller trees sing out in either happiness or distress based on the environmental conditions the mother tree is sensing.