subtle signals emerge from plant life, evolving musical forms.

i had the first, shall we say spirit connection with a plant when about 10 years of age, in a pebbled river bed in Sofala, a small town on the outskirts of Bathurst in NSW; gold rush country. the plant stood alone and i can recall vividly how it announced its presence to me as foxglove, provider of heart medicine, in use medically today as the drug derived from digitalis. this plant is native to England and was brought to this country early. it is also a thriving visitor that has set up a permanent home in New Zealand.

anyway i was conscious to foxglove’s aliveness, and plant sentience generally from an early age.

to say that plants are alive is a statement of the obvious in modern culture. plants have played an integral role, symbiotic with other life forms, humans and other animals that consume them as a source of energy for sustaining life.

it’s practical, many say desirable, to thrive on a plant based diet.

it’s estimated from fossil records, that plant life began in simple form some 700 million years ago. flowering plants, the category of plant that is most familiar to human life, began to evolve about 150 million years ago.

apparently Homo Sapiens evolved into what would be recognised as the human being some 200,000 years ago. this equates to plants having been around 3500 times longer than humans. or put another way, if a piece of string were stretched 1 km representing the period plant life has been around, then humans would occupy the last 28cm; about the height of an A4 piece of paper.

so plants seem to have discovered a thing or two about evolutionary survival. do plants have some sort of innate intelligence or consciousness? this is not known, though during the seventies, Peter Tompkins wrote a seminal book; The Secret Life of Plants, which posed that plants have sentience. it was suggested through a series of experiments that plants responded and reacted to certain sounds and music.

these recorded sessions on bandcamp are inspired by that starting point.

analog and virtual analog synthesisers are used, triggered by the minute electrical signals present in plants to reveal various sounds. the signals are converted into notes; “plant music” using a device known as a midi sprout.

the sounds are played back live through speakers, in the presence of the plant making the signal; creating a bio-feedback loop. the output is captured directly. at this stage there is no remixing, or use of computer software editing.

recent new developments are: connecting humans electrically in series with the plant; and independently of the plant using a second set up, to discover what arises through direct interconnection between plant and human.

sessions to date have involved several types of plants; cacti, orchids, various trees, and vegetables. mushrooms (themselves not plants) have also been tried.

what or who is motivating the sounds? there is a tendency for humans to anthropomorphise experiences of nature, indeed, most things; interpretation of sounds derived from plants being no different. some people report hearing happy, sad, excited and other moods in this “plant music”. after a while, with repetition and familiarity, i find that an aesthetic without these emotional responses emerges.

in my own experience it feels as if the plants themselves are motivating the sounds, the music. I am simply a convenient part of the whole connected organism. its a work or rather, play in progress. stay tuned...