This series of Augmented Reality (AR) experiences prompts speculative storytelling about the entanglement of people, plants, and places. It is an intervention into everyday spaces of green and concrete at walking speed. A custom web-based AR app functions as an easy to use "sketching tool" that activates a symbiotic imaginary by planting hybrid gardens—juxtaposing physical environment features and virtual plants. We envision the ideas of symbiosis and interdependence between the plants and their environments as prompts for multiple stories and narratives about desired and undesired future natures. In this context, Entanglements does not promote a return to a romantic notion of nature in pre-industrialized times; instead, it encourages playful and even subversive approaches to possible future symbioses between plants and the built environment specific to the exhibition site. In their relationship to a real site, we hope the virtual plant growth captures the audiences’ imagination and inspires reflection on topics such as: highly constructed ideas of nature, power, and political ideologies; ruderal sites of disruption, regeneration, and succession or highly urbanized environments with little visible plant growth.

Acknowledgements & Credits: 3D plant models by Quinn McMullen Winkler