Becoming Media

Plants communicate with their fellow species, but also with other species. The communication of humans with plants, in turn, represents an old phantasm that is intended to lead to contact with the seemingly mute creatures. This article revisits the history of plant cognition from a media theory perspective. The article questions the extent to which media and electricity have historically been and are currently leitmotifs for entering into resonance with plants. The focus is on media-historical and science-historical approaches that have conferred to plants the ability to communicate and on current sensor interfaces through which plants are turned into sound in media art. The article argues that, whenever media technology makes plants ‘speak’, what the human listener actually hears is the medium, not the plant, because it is a human construct.