Plants derive energy from the sun through photosynthesis, a process which is nondestructive and world-preserving. In a culture which denigrates all things vegetal, our desire to burn everything and everyone runs counter to the means by which plants obtain bountiful solar energy. Are plants more radically open to flows of energy than animals? Might the vegetal offer a model of energy that does not destroy our planet through extraction? What might we learn from the energetic – and less energetic – lives of seeds?

Seed Energies was a sensory workshop with artists, ecologists and philosophers, exploring how environments shape seed morphology and plant reproductive behaviour. The group studied the processes of photosynthesis, cellular respiration and DNA transcription, and created collective and individual scores of vegetal energetic relations.