Plants are capable of acting in the world and display nuanced forms of intelligence: they perceive and adapt to their surroundings, and actively shape their bodies and environments. They communicate and cooperate, make decisions, solve problems—and even play. Issue #7 of INSERT, edited by Yvonne Volkart, brings together current interdisciplinary discourses on plant intelligence from the perspective of aesthetic theory and practice. Artists, philosophers, indigenous media activists, art and media theorists, as well as biologists seek modes of articulation, media, methods, and traditions that view plants as sensing, acting, flexible—intelligent—beings.

Editorial #7, 2025. Plant Intelligence – Towards a Vegetal Aesthetics
Yvonne Volkart

Days Are as Grass. On Karel Miler’s “Felt by Fresh Grass,” Plant Intelligence and Expanded Aesthetics
Matthew Fuller

Jajañe—Chagra—Garden
Felipe Castelblanco, Ayênan John Quinchoa Juajibioy, Natalia Uribe Macías

Open-Air Laboratory. An Approach from the Perspective of Plant Aesthetics
Noelia Billi

Aroma Colorado
Julia Mensch

Forest. Suite for the Anthropocene
Cate Sandilands

Speculative Conceptual Strategies
Giovanni Aloi, Yvonne Volkart

Dividual Interweavements. Linguistically and Algorithmically Staged
Ursula Damm, Michaela Ott

AI Herbarium. Flowering Plants as Inventors of Their Own Existence
Rasa Smite

This issue of INSERT was created within the framework of the research project "Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant" (2022–2025) which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and based at the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. Further information: http://plants-intelligence.ch

View issue: https://insert.art/ausgaben/plant-intelligence/

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