AI, Plant Humanities, and Cultural text

The experimental research project explores plant humanities through artificial intelligence and the lens of literary text. As a collaboration between Romanian philology students and Hong Kong students from mixed disciplines, the aim is to propose and implement provocations (art in multimedia and text) to display the possibilities of plant as agentic, interactive, and how they act as mediators of time and memory. This project sits at the intersection of post-humanism, computational linguistics, and comparative literature.

Possible questions include: Does giving a plant a “voice” via AI grant it personhood, or does it merely anthropomorphise a biological process? AI models are often trained on “beautiful” literature. Does the AI ignore the “ugly” parts of plant life (decay, parasitism, competition) to create a romanticised version of nature? Can AI instruments “translate” vegetal time into forms accessible to human understanding?

Students will be required to perform the following tasks:

• Work in cross-institutional team (Hong Kong and Romanian students)
• Translate a provocative research question to an artistic idea/ concept
• Create/make your artistic prototype
• Orally present your final product and complete a short report
• Complete post-project reflection exercises

Participants will gain experience in speculative and artistic research methods. Participating students must attend all of the following workshops taking place on Zoom:

1. Introductory workshop – 17 March 2026, 2:00 – 4:00 pm HKT
2. Conceptual workshop – 24 March 2026, 2:00 – 3:00 pm HKT
3. Progress workshop – 31 March 2026, 2:00 – 3:00 pm HKT
4. Final presentation – 14 April 2026, 2:00 – 3:00 pm HKT

Students are also expected to meet in groups at least once every week to work on their projects.

Each group is eligible for reimbursement of up to $800 for purchase of materials, software, services etc. required to create their prototypes.

Credit and Grant

Students should be prepared to commit at least 20 hours of work and meet the required task milestones. Undergraduate students are eligible to earn a certificate and apply for one (1) non-graduating academic credit through HKU Horizons (The credit appears on your transcript but does not count towards your GPA or graduation).

HKU UGC-funded students who successfully complete the project will be automatically eligible for HK$5,000 funding on academic activities related to this project (for e.g. dissemination and conference support, travel expenses to Romania). The funding will be reimbursement-only funding.

Students who complete the project, will also be eligible for a HK$500 stipend for completing an optional research activity related to the project.