"Vocabulary of Plants" is a long term research project, balancing between science, artistic data visualisation design, technology and art. It has been conceived and has started while World Wilder Lab worked on a final version of "Organic Cinema v 4.0" with a question "How to Interpret Signals Acquired from Plants?". Since the development of PlanEt prototype we have been taking readings regularly from variety of plants, testing the quality of signals and observing patterns.

Albeit very far away from conclusions, we have now some observations, which can act as a base for our library of readings. This section is being updated now regularly with new experiments and patterns, and we hope that in due course we will have a substantial number of data to start creating "Vocabulary of Plants".

Through PlanEt we can detect the electrical discharge from ions present in the water intake by plants, distributed in the apoplast - that is the space between plants cell walls. That water is not absorbed by the cells themselves, and its presence in-between cells is a result of plant’s self-regulating how much water and nutrients it needs. The apoplast itself plays a major role in a diverse range of processes, including intercellular signalling, plant–microbe interactions and both water and nutrient transport. Signals acquired with PlanEt are a result of small changes in conductance through the apoplast and that reflects changes in ion concentrations in the apoplast.

There are any number of reasons why such changes might occur, including (but not limited to) pathogen defense, water and/or mineral stress, normal developmental events, cell death, circadian and/or diurnal rhythms which could be connected to photosynthesis.
The signals - data which we get from ions in the apoplast - can inform us about various plant’s reactions to its environment. For example the leaf apoplast connects the plant with the atmosphere. Together with the atmospheric conditions and conditions in the leaf apoplast, it can determine the exchange processes in either direction, informing the plant about its environment.