http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/talktome/objects/146358/Botanicalls gives a voice to our silent everyday companions: house plants. The device, which uses moisture sensors in a plant’s soil to trigger messages sent to its human caretaker over a wireless network, opens up a playful, yet useful, line of communication. The messages are either tweeted or read out by a recorded human voice via telephone, and the plants are polite enough to send both distress calls and notes of thanks. While Botanicalls enables one particular form of inter-species communication, its fresh use of sensor technology could be implemented more broadly.
