Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligenceEighth editionWed 15 May 2024, 6.30pmAll welcome, free entry, booking required
Plant consciousnessMonica GaglianoEvolutionary ecologist, Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) at Southern Cross University, Australia
Monica Gagliano’s pioneering scientific discoveries provides us with powerful evidence that plants possess forms of intelligence. Her latest book, Thus Spoke the Plant, is a “phytobiography”, or collection of stories written in partnership with plants, where she shares genuine first-hand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. Inspired by encounters with Nature and indigenous elders from around the world, she looks beyond mechanistic explanations, and presents the need for a more unified worldview – one where science and spiritually complement each other. Plant cognition is a new and exciting field of research directed at experimentally testing the cognitive abilities of plants, including perception, learning processes, memory and consciousness. The emerging framework holds considerable implications for the way we perceive plants as it redefines the traditionally held boundary between animals and plants.The novel concepts and perspectives emerging from this research on vegetal life are galvanising a truly interdisciplinary dialogue across an array of academic disciplines, including science, philosophy, environmental law, literature and the arts.
Monica GaglianoMonica Gagliano PhD is an internationally award-winning research scientist, selected by Biohabitats as one of the 24 most Inspiring Women of Ecology, together with Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Sylvia Earl, and Terry Tempest Williams. She has been an invited lecturer at the most prestigious universities, including UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth and Georgetown. Monica’s pioneering work has been widely featured by prominent media, such as The New York Times, Forbes, The New Yorker, The Guardian, National Geographic, and many others. Monica is Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) of evolutionary ecology based in Australia. She is currently Chief Scientist at Kaiāulu|Coherence Lab in Hawaii, and Research Associate at the Takiwasi Centre in Perú.
Monica has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, which for the first time, experimentally demonstrates that plants emit voices and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. Her work has extended the concept of cognition in plants. By demonstrating experimentally that learning and memory are not the exclusive province of animals, Monica has reignited the discourse of plant subjectivity, as well as ethical and legal standing. Inspired by encounters with nature and indigenous elders from around the world, Monica applies an innovative and holistic approach to science, one that is comfortable engaging at the interface between areas as diverse as ecology, physics, law, anthropology, philosophy, literature, music, the arts, and spirituality. By re-kindling a sense of wonder for the beautiful place we call home, she is helping to create a new ecology of mind that inspires the emergence of revolutionary solutions toward human interactions with the world we co-inhabit. Monica’s studies have led her to author numerous ground-breaking scientific articles and books, including Thus Spoke the Plant (2018) and The Mind of Plants (2021).
Organised by CADA in partnership with Lisbon Architecture Triennale and Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon
Funded by: República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das ArtesFoto/Photo: Alexander Boëthiu