Non Flowers for a Hoverfly is a VR 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. The scientific study is led by Dr Shannon Olsson and her team at the N.C:B.S. Non Flowers belong to the emerging field of interspecies design, where the environment is designed for 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 used 3D printing technologies to create a new typology of forms. The prototypes illustrated on this page based on fractal geometries were realised in collaboration with Vikram Pradhan at Srishti and the AddLAb at Aalto University (Finland). They were the first models to be tested by insect in a VR world.

Non Flowers was 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 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 Iceland.