As part of my project, I participated in several Mentoring Meetings:
- Lucy T Smith (botanical illustrator at Kew Gardens in London, UK). Smith told me, “When botanists publish a new plant species, a scientific botanical illustration is essential to convey delicate details that cannot be explained in botanical words.” I wondered whether this means that those who cannot see the plant illustration, such as people with sight loss, may find it difficult to understand the structure and characteristics of the plant. What if botanical illustrators can verbalise the delicate structure of a plant in their drawings, illuminating the details that botanists cannot describe with their scientific words? I invited Smith to explore linguistic ways of describing the structure of the dandelion and audio-recorded her describing what details she saw while drawing (Figure 9).
- James Cyril Towersey (gardening leader for the visually impaired at Galloways in Preston, UK). Towersey guided me to Galloway’s garden – which is run by people with sight loss and volunteers – and introduced me to one of the gardening members, Bob Millus, who was 92, visually impaired and had excellent gardening skills. Millus demonstrated to me how he recognised dandelions. But it turned out that he pulled them out as weeds (Figure 10), which was different from my expectations of learning how to recognise and touch the plants sensibly. Nevertheless, while visiting the Galloways gardening team, I found this community has strengthened its solidarity through its gardening activities. These community characteristics and facilities can enable me to experiment with cross-sensory installation of the dandelion both indoors and outdoors, where plants live – going beyond taking a visual approach – to collect diverse feedback on my work, engaging with those who have different sensory abilities and cultural practices, tracing some potential long-term changes through continuous research exchanges with the community. Moreover, the Galloways gardening team and other members showed interest in and welcomed my project. They aspired to expand their artistic activities, and my research can contribute to this vision. Thus, I am keen to present my research outcomes to them next year.
- Ju Hyun Lee (artist and chef at ADDSEA in Besançon, France). ADDSEA (Association Départementale du Doubs de Sauvegarde de l’Enfant à l’Adulte) is a social organisation founded in 1956 that focuses on social support, child protection, housing assistance and integration programmes for vulnerable individuals and their families. I asked Lee to create a new recipe for using dandelions as essential food ingredients and examine the possibility of shifting human perception of the dandelion from a common weed to a companion plant. Lee made dandelion gimbap (Korean-style rice rolls), jellies and drinks (Figure 11) at a cooking workshop for myself and other participants. In French food culture, making a salad with dandelion leaves was common before the 1970s; but this is seemingly less common today, as none of the participants had experienced eating them before the workshop. The cooking experience was enjoyable, and sharing the food made the group of people open to sharing their memories and thoughts about dandelions. But in the end, I regretted that I accepted Lee’s suggestion to eat the plant’s roots. In my philosophy, eating a plant’s roots is better than wasting or killing the plant as a weed. However, I decided to uphold my project’s policy of carefully engaging with plants’ lives – that is, I do not root out or pick plants unless I need to eat. Thus, I will embrace the challenge of perceiving the dandelion roots through my own and others’ imagination, which could open up spaces to engage with plant life beyond what we can immediately see.
- Marcus Maeder (acoustic ecology researcher and composer based in Zurich, Switzerland). I had a one-hour Zoom meeting with Maeder, asking the question: “Is it possible to record some sounds from inside the dandelions?” His answer was “No, it is not possible to record a small plant, but we can record the plant’s surrounding sounds”. I thought it would be interesting to conduct an observational study on how he makes music about dandelions and analyse its outcome.
- Orietta Gianjorio (sensory evaluation expert and sommelier specialising in olive oil, honey and chocolate based in Rome, Italy). I asked Gianjorio’s advice on what characteristics of dandelions can be experienced through the senses, especially the parts of the dandelion above the root: the petals, stigma, bracts, pappus (hairs and cone), stem and leaf. At my request, she investigated the appearance, aroma, taste, flavour and texture of each part of the dandelion and gave me some valuable reports: Dandelion Sensory Evaluation and Descriptive Analysis, Aromas Spider, Gustative Persistency, and Taste Web Comparison (Figure 12). Gianjorio remarked to me: “You must have been the first client in the world who asked to research dandelions”. I think her study is the first to analyse dandelions through sensory evaluation; her research has deepened my understanding of the plant’s intrinsic characteristics in a way that goes beyond scientific knowledge and has given me new linguistic materials on which to perceive dandelions differently. For instance, the dandelion puff was described with a range of sensory terms: the colour varies from water white to yellow-white; the smell is reminiscent of jasmine, orange zest, tea leaves and dry wood; against the mouth, it tastes and feels soft like cotton candy, and is fluffy, bristly, feathery, spherical and gritty; and it sounds like fuzzy aspirin in water (a very soft sound, almost imperceptible). Furthermore, in collaboration with Gianjorio, this experiment triggered me to write different guidelines on how to deepen our approach to and experience dandelions, which can be applied to my film scripts, performance scenarios and public engagement workshops.