Succulent Signaling: Digital (Plant) Culture and the Wellness Industrial Complex (in progress),
Virtual Reality Environment
I began posting pictures of plants last year on Instagram while I was looking for a job, spending a lot of time at home. I felt supported by my fellow digital plant posters and looked forward to interacting with them every day. While I found the pastime fulfilling in the sense that I belonged to a community, it became clear I was performing hours of free labor every day. I nurtured plants, photographed them perfectly and spent time painstakingly writing appealing captions followed with a string of popular hashtags. Finally, posting at the most optimal time. Furniture stores and self-care products began mimicking the images that I and my fellow Instagrammers posted. The images were reverse engineered by big companies and sold back to them as advertisements. I realized there was more to be discussed on digital plant care in terms of digital culture on a universal level. Now I am looking deeper into the culture that I was so involved with to bring to light underlying messages communicated through social media, technology and #plantfriends using an immersive VR environment.
The virtual reality environment will show different elements of plant care by an Instagram plant user and use voiceover and text on the screen in the digital plant culture lexicon to provoke a sense of calm that quickly turns into a feedback loop of anxiety created by addiction to instant gratification.