Garden Me Tender

Garden Me Tender

Stať ve sborníku mimo WoS a Scopus

This paper examines Garden Me Tender, an artistic research project that investigates the legal concept of agency through the speculative extension of land ownership to vegetation. Drawing on a case study of post-industrial terrain in Brno, the project combines botanical fieldwork, environmental sensing, and machine learning to explore how plant communities interact with abiotic conditions over time. Sensor-based data collection (light, temperature, humidity) is reframed as a form of testimony, documenting the persistent presence of vegetation and invoking the legal principle of usucapio (adverse possession). These datasets are translated into speculative visualizations using a retrained diffusion model, generating hypothetical plant forms adapted to recorded conditions. By merging legal theory, ecological knowledge, and computational image-making, the project challenges anthropocentric notions of subjectivity and ownership, proposing a posthuman framework in which agency emerges from distributed, more-than-human relations. Ultimately, it reconsiders the evidentiary status of data and the possibility of recognizing non-human entities as legal subjects in a datafied, extractive epistemic landscape.

This paper examines Garden Me Tender, an artistic research project that investigates the legal concept of agency through the speculative extension of land ownership to vegetation. Drawing on a case study of post-industrial terrain in Brno, the project combines botanical fieldwork, environmental sensing, and machine learning to explore how plant communities interact with abiotic conditions over time. Sensor-based data collection (light, temperature, humidity) is reframed as a form of testimony, documenting the persistent presence of vegetation and invoking the legal principle of usucapio (adverse possession). These datasets are translated into speculative visualizations using a retrained diffusion model, generating hypothetical plant forms adapted to recorded conditions. By merging legal theory, ecological knowledge, and computational image-making, the project challenges anthropocentric notions of subjectivity and ownership, proposing a posthuman framework in which agency emerges from distributed, more-than-human relations. Ultimately, it reconsiders the evidentiary status of data and the possibility of recognizing non-human entities as legal subjects in a datafied, extractive epistemic landscape.

posthuman agency, legal subjectivity, environmental sensing, synanthropic flora, usucapio, diffusion models, data aesthetics, more-than-human relations

posthuman agency, legal subjectivity, environmental sensing, synanthropic flora, usucapio, diffusion models, data aesthetics, more-than-human relations

BERGAMASCHI, L.; JAVŮREK, T.

16.07.2025

i2ADS Research Institute in Art, Design and Society Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto

Avenida Rodrigues de Freitas, 265 4049-021 Porto Portugal

978-989-9279-05-6

xCoAx 2025 Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X

7

https://2025.xcoax.org/pdf/bergamaschi.pdf