Non Flowers for a Hoverfly is a Virtual Reality world for insect pollinators realised in collaboration with a biology lab at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. This collaboration was initiated as part of Thomas Pausz´s artist residency at the Srishti Interim programme.

Non Flowers are a new type of pseudo pollen carrier designed according to the perception of pollinators. These syntheticflowers are conceived to improve interspecies collaboration in greenhouses for future food production. Dr Shannon B. Olsson and her team at the N.C.B.S are conducting scientific studies in the perception of pollinators, and in the various signals exchanged between flowers and insects.

Non Flowers belong to the emerging fields of more-than-human and interspecies design, where the environment is conceived for both humans and non-humans species. The project intersects with pioneering ideas of bio-semiotics, research on insect perception and synaesthesia as well as ideas of affective ecologies.

Pausz and Olsson used 3D printing technologies to create a new typology of flower-objects inspired by pollinators´ perception. The prototypes illustrated on this page based on fractal geometries and were realised in collaboration with media artist Vikram Pradhan at Srishti (India) and printed at the AddLab at Aalto University (Finland). The digital Non Flowers were the first models to be tested by hoverflies in the experimental VR world the NCBS Bangalore.

Non Flowers was first exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2019, in the exhibition Food: Bigger than the Plate curated by Catherine Flood and May Rosenthal Sloan. The project was selected as part of the Future Architecture Platform. The project was also exhibited at the event Nektar & Ambrosia in Iceland for a special collaboration with ethical fashion label USEE studio in the greenhouse of the Nordic House in Reykjavik, and was awarded a Reykjavík Grapevine Design award. 

Related: Double Capture