{"id":1822,"date":"2019-09-16T19:03:25","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T19:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/\/?post_type=portfolio&p=1822"},"modified":"2023-04-20T19:42:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T19:42:26","slug":"photophagia-the-secret-life-of-plants-will-be-described-by-gardeners-and-shown-without-the-picture","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/portfolio\/photophagia-the-secret-life-of-plants-will-be-described-by-gardeners-and-shown-without-the-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"PHOTOPHAGIA: The Secret Life of Plants will be described by gardeners and shown without the picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Video,  99 minutes.  2019.<\/p>\n

\"A
Illustration by Elise Conlin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Secret Life of Plants <\/i>is a 1979 documentary based on a book by the same name.  The content of the book and movie has been critiqued as pseudoscience, yet continues to inspire reverence for plant life and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness.<\/p>\n

The soundtrack was created by Stevie Wonder, a fact that conspiracy theorists hold up as evidence that Stevie Wonder is not actually blind.  As noted on The Organist <\/em>podcast<\/a>, Stevie Wonder was probably able to experience the visual aspects of The Secret Life of Plants<\/i> through a simple technology:  audio description, likely provided in a casual way by his assistants.<\/p>\n

I invited community members who have relationships with plants (gardeners, florists, biologists, herbalists, master gardeners, farmers, foragers, weed-pullers, nature geeks, makers of gooseberry jam, plant-eaters, and plant-lovers of all kinds) to each describe a scene of the film. These informal descriptions play alongside the documentary, which is screened without the picture, inviting “viewers” to sit in relative darkness together and listen.<\/p>\n

PHOTOPHAGIA was produced by Ontario Culture Days and presented by Culture Days and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in a relaxed screening for DO BLUE BUTTERFLIES EAT PARTS OF THE SKY?<\/a> an exhibition curated by Dave Dyment. It has been exhibited at The MacKenzie Art Gallery as part of Chyrons for the Future<\/a>, curated by Crystal Mowry, and at Charlottetown’s Art In the Open 2022<\/a>, curated by Amish Morrell and Kirstie McCallum. A web version of the project can be experienced here<\/a>. A transcript, including experimental sound descriptions, is available in PDF format<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many thanks to all who made this project possible:<\/p>\n

Community description by Rachael Chong, Yvonne Ip, Aura Linsley, Theo Linsley, Maya Linsley, Sara Brubacher, Patti Lennox, Abhi Dewan, Kai Reimer Watts, Clara Jenner, Rodger Tschanz, Fan-Ling Suen, Janet L’Abbe, David Shumaker, Chris Earley, Candace McCutcheon, Anna-Marie Larsen, Marcel Visser, Dennis Murphy, Stephanie Jenner, Felix Morrell, Marlene deGroot-Maggetti, Sally Ludwig, Lea Tran, & Maria Brown.<\/p>\n

Editing and tech support by Nathan Saliwonchyk.  Additional support from The Commons Studio.<\/p>\n

I gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts’ support of the research and creation of this work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Video,  99 minutes.  2019. The Secret Life of Plants is a 1979 documentary based on a book by the same name.  The content of the book and movie has been critiqued as pseudoscience, yet continues to inspire reverence for plant life and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness. The soundtrack was created by Stevie Wonder, a fact …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"portfolio-category":[],"portfolio-tag":[],"class_list":["post-1822","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/1822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2412,"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/1822\/revisions\/2412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"portfolio-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio-category?post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"portfolio-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aislinnthomas.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio-tag?post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}