Solarceptors

Virtual Reality / Immersive video installation, 2025

Solarceptors is an immersive experience grounded in artistic research on ‘plant intelligence,’ tracing the origins and evolution of flowering plants, which Darwin once referred to as the ‘abominable mystery.

The experience takes viewers on a journey through five episodes, beginning a hundred million years ago when flowers rapidly diversified into an astonishing array of forms and colors, marking their “green big bang” of life. It then moves to more recent events, such as the explosive diversification of lupins in the high elevations of the Andes, illustrating that evolution can unfold far more quickly than previously thought.

 

The journey then shifts to the flowers’ relationship with light, presenting their light-sensing abilities: born from light, they not only harness it for photosynthesis but, as light-sensitive organisms, they exhibit extraordinary plasticity and adaptability, providing vivid evidence of their resilience in the face of environmental challenges. Their capacity to adapt through diversification may allow them to survive even the most extreme environmental shifts, including the accelerated anthropogenic climate change of today. As scientist Colin Edward Hughes notes, “It’s fascinating—and perhaps reassuring—that even long after humans are gone, flowering plant evolution will continue diversifying life.”

The experience concludes with an artistic interpretation that highlights the unique spatiotemporality of flowers – tracking the sun, synchronizing with planetary cycles, embodying their attunement to both time and space, and ultimately becoming light themselves.

 

 

Artists: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits (2025)

Research: Rasa Smite, in the framework of: Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant research project (2022–2025), led by Yvonne Volkart (Principal Investigator), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, hosted by the Institute for Art, Gender, and Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW (http://plants-intelligence.ch)

Scientific expertise:
“Light Sensing” was a collaboration with breeding researchers Christine Arncken, Mariateresa Lazzaro, Monika Messmer at FiBL – the Swiss Organic Farming Research Institute, Switzerland.

VR programming: Kristaps Biters

EXHIBITIONS

Unter Pflanzen, Museum Sinclair-Haus, Bad Hamburg, 2025