Pictures from "Talk to me" opening – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rixcriga/sets/72157669976297214

Pictures from "Talk to me" installation – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rixcriga/sets/72157670339779813

On the White Night of the 10^th of September at 18.00 artists Smite and Smits with mixmaster AG and VJ Mārtiņš Ratniks invite to impressive plant communication performance! The visitors will see how the beans have grown taller and how the messages sent to the plants are being interpreted – by creating interactive maps of the words, 3D word clouds, and real-time sound compositions and audiovisual projections.

“To grow or not to grow – that is the question” – this was a message left by an anonymous person to the bean plants grown by artists Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits a few years ago at the start of the “Talk to Me” human-plant communication research project. This year the project has resulted in an outstanding exhibition by the artists which has been developed in collaboration with the National Library of Latvia.

This time the artists are interested in the following question: Which words do the beans wish to hear to grow and reach the gable of the library? Tell them to the beans online at http://talktome.rixc.lv or by using the console and online interface available at the library starting on the 29^th of August. The first part of the “Talk to Me” installation – the growing bean plants and online interface – will be set up on the 29^th of August, together with the permanent exhibition “Book in Latvia”, with the aim to collect new messages by the White Night. We expect that the new exhibition at the National Library of Latvia, which is comprised of unique historic books and modern artifacts such as an archive of digital publications, may also inspire you to talk to the beans growing at the library.

The text messages sent online will be “read out” aloud to the plants day and night. You will be able to choose the voice to talk to the beans: one of the plants at the library will be talked to in a female voice, the other by a male. The messages will be collected and analyzed, calculating the most frequently used words and exploring the relations between the words used together.

http://smitesmits.com/TalkToMe3D.html – more information about the “Talk to Me” project

https://vimeo.com/160283656 – video demo (1 min), part of the multimedia projection which will be on view on the White Night (together with Martins Ratniks)

https://vimeo.com/38419738 – a publicity video and documentation on the “Talk to Me” project

Support: Riga City Council.
In collaboration with the National Library of Latvia.