BIAD graduate Andy Broomfield (I supervised his dissertation) has just released source code for a Blog Bot Platform project….

“…an open source platform to allow people to design their own blogging robots”

He showed a working prototype in Jan 08 at the Royal College of Art Design Interactions: Work in Progress show…

“my first example is on show, a blogging plant.”

blogbots.jpg

The plant is currently blogging via Twitter. Or it was. The last post was on 7th March 08, when the plant said it was… “abandoned to the Darkness”. Oh dear, I fear the worst.

I wonder if, as with the photoblogging cats, a blogging plant might engage in some photography. You’re probably seen those speeded-up movies of how plants move their leaves through the day. What if a sturdy plant had tiny camera s fixed to the end of its leaves? What if the resulting six or eight images were hourly run through panorama-stitching software? It might be a mess, but it might be a curiously elegant patchwork if the plant was in a Botanical Gardens or a similarly strong visual/organic environment.

[ Update: Podnosh asks: “why?”. I have a posting from last year that explains some of the possibilities for automated/generative blogging. ]

[ Update: Ben had a similar idea to me, back in Feb, although very speeded-up: fixing minicams to his hands while playing guitar. ]