A Sharp infrared sensor on an Arduino, $3 of hardware, measures how close you are. When you’re far away, 6,317 bones dance independently, each leaf moving to its own rhythm like fingers underwater. When you approach, the tree notices. It tenses. Get closer and it shakes, folds inward, trembles. It’s afraid of you. Step back and it slowly, slowly exhales back into its private dance.

The same week, NASA told our orchid the world was on fire. Real satellite data, MODIS sensors at 705km altitude scanning the planet every six hours, feeding into a Maxillaria orchid that wilts, curls, changes color from green to charred black depending on how many fires are burning in Bolivia right now. The orchid doesn’t know it’s an orchid, but its petals droop with real grief pulled from real coordinates where real forests are disappearing. I built an interactive world map where you can click any country and watch the fires load in. The numbers are always worse than you expect.

And then there’s the llama. Brian Condori rigged 56 bones and I spent two days solving this problem: when a human stands up straight, a llama should stand on four legs doing nothing. Sounds obvious. But every tracking system sends non-zero data when you’re standing still, your shoulders have an angle, your elbows have an angle, your knees have an angle. The llama was standing like a person. Lifting its chest, crossing its forelegs. So we built a calibration system: stand still for two seconds, the system learns what “you doing nothing” looks like, and from then on it only sends the difference. Standing equals zero. Zero equals a llama at rest on four hooves with a horizontal spine.

We talked with Eilif B. Muller and Yasmeen Hitti about what happens when the data goes the other way. Not just body to creature, but creature back to body. If the tree is afraid, can the performer feel the fear? Haptics. Vibration. Texture. Brain cortex stimulation.

Eleven pipelines running now. Five plants, four animals, a fire, and a frightened tree. Every creature responds to something different, a camera, a gyroscope, a pulse sensor, a satellite, a proximity sensor and none of them know about each other yet. They just receive UDP packets and become alive.

The llama still needs work. The leaves still don’t fully update from timer callbacks. The IMU sends garbage at the wrong baud rate. But the tree is shy, the orchid mourns, and when Brian moves his arms in front of the OAK-D camera the llama’s legs follow on the screen beside him.

Todo nace desde lo pequeño.

Daniel Fallshaw is back with a lots of new sensors and more computers, hard drives, mics, cameras… :-)