Cover the Spread: resilience and a surreptitious dispersion system for urban flora

Abstract

Cover the Spread is a series of kinetic vehicles constructed from found materials, each designed to be interactive and transport a living plant. The work is meant as a personal, lo-fi hack of the city, infilling plant life into small fractures in the urban environment. The plants chosen for this project are locally foraged varieties of Asteraceae which utilize wind driven seed dispersal, require little soil or care to thrive, and are able to germinate in small verge habitats. Vehicle movement triggers the broadcast of plant seeds to random, unutilized public spaces. Spreading resilience through the growth of small, unobtrusive plants transforms idle sidewalk cracks into temporary sites of change and microsequestration of carbon. The exhibition encouraged activation of the machines and the plants they carried, both inside and outside of the gallery.