We are replacing ecosystems with systems – and forgetting which one we actually depend on.

In the sterile spaces of technological optimization, unease grows. The installation RE5IDUAL VEGETAT!ON confronts us with the remnants of a failed promise: the perfectly controlled nature. Makeshift glass vessels houseplants kept alive by a digital supply system—a fragmented laboratory experiment in indoor farming that seems to have long-lost its original purpose.

Visitors become accomplices of a system that stages its dysfunctionality. The touchscreen promises control, but every intervention triggers a cascade of calculated errors. The display begins to glitch, the technology takes on a life of its own, and what starts as rational control descends into digital chaos. The machine performs a theater—simulating its rebellion against human domination.

Meanwhile, an acoustic landscape permeates the space: through a five-channel system, the familiar sounds of air conditioning units initially resonate—that omnipresent hum of modernity that conditions and normalizes life. But with each glitch, this composition escalates into unsettling noise, making the failure of technological control audible.

RE5IDUAL VEGETAT!ON explores the ambivalence of our relationship with nature in the age of digitalization. The installation reveals the fragility of systems that seek to optimize life and raises the question of the cost of total control. What remains when machines no longer obey? What grows in the interstices of failure?

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4 x tanks
24″ touchscreen, water tank, fertilizer, CO2 cartridge, heat foil and LED strip
Raspberry Pi and Arduino with electronic circuit and sensors.