Dreaming of an Interspecies Sensor
Creative Technology
Interaction Design
Graphic Design
Project Type
Self-initiated / Research through Design
Year
2024-2025
What if a tree had a hand—and what if that hand
could dance?
Dreaming of an Interspecies Sensor explores
alternative ways of relating to the natural
world—rooted in research on interspecies
communication and performance. But instead of
embedding sensors into plants or translating their
behavior into data, this project asks: could
metaphor, movement, and playfulness form another
kind of interface?
At the centre is A Friendly Hand. A DIY robotic
prototype made from paper, thread, and a light
sensor. It responds to shifting light
animations—Carbon, Glow, and Pulse—each triggering
its own rhythm of motion. As the light shifts, the
hand wiggles, reaches, or trembles. It’s not
efficient or particularly accurate, but maybe that’s
the point. The gestures feel like a tree trying to
reach back. Or dreaming that it could.
Rather than embedding sensors into plants, this work proposes a different kind of interface—one that values agency for plant life and drawing connections between circuits and trees' root system. From birch plywood that echoes Simard’s research on mother trees to the imagined flow of carbon through threads of mycelium, A Friendly Hand, though synthetic, breathes life through conceptual design, poetic built, and research through design.
It uses design not just as output, but as inquiry—a medium to ask questions about connection in a digital age and what it means to relate to the natural world.
Presented as both a book and a video, the project invites reflection: on what we choose to notice in the digital age, and on what trees—and the physical, natural world—still mean to us on a planetary scale. Or maybe, it's just another absurd metaphor—for how far I imagine materials and pixels, physical and digital, human and nature can be blurred.
This self-initiated project was exhibited at
Open Endings at The LASALLE Show Exhibition
2025.
As part of a larger
show that explored design’s capacity to propose,
unsettle, and remain open — unfinished not in
craft,
but in its invitation to imagine what else could
grow.
Designed by
Zarer Lim
Supervised by
Andreas Schlegel
Exhibited at
Open Endings, The LASALLE Show 2025
Link
Creative Process Journal
If this tickles you creative fancy,
let's chat
zayrerboy@gmail.com
Copyright © 2025 Zarer Lim. All Rights Reserved.