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[Ed.: First things first: the bulk of this article was researched and written by Robin Vincent, who did an excellent job covering broad aspects of the history and modern state of plant-centric biometric data sensing in experimental electronic music. However, as we were preparing his article for release, we received word about the impending announcement of Instruo's Pocket Scion—a new affordable + portable tool for making music with plants. So, we took the opportunity to expand his original text to weave this new tool into the story. So, the description of Pocket Scion found here was added by Signal editor Ryan Gaston prior to publishing; the rest of the work is Vincent's. Teamwork, as they say :) ]
There are times when electronic music feels disconnected from the natural world. The process of sound generation leans into artificial synthesis and electronic emulation of reality rather than an interaction with our environment. But any assumption that electronic music-making is somehow devoid of organic influence would be terribly myopic. Music and plant life have always been natural collaborators, from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony to Rachmaninov's "Lilacs," Vaughan Williams's "Fantasia on Greensleeves" to the Delibes "Flower Duet," the inspiration of fauna and flora enriches our very sense of musical foundation.
Can this inspiration go both ways? In the 1950s, experiments began to surface that looked into the relationship between plants and music. It asked the question of whether plants could experience emotions and whether they could perceive musical vibrations in positive and negative ways. A 1973 book by Dorothy Retallack called The Effect of Music on Plants suggested that plants exposed to classical music thrived much quicker than those given a diet of rock music. Other people have suggested that her conclusions have much more to do with a conservative religious agenda than any scientific rigor, but the idea that sympathetic, classical-style music is something plants enjoy still persists. An earlier recorded work, Music to Grow Plants By, by Dr. George Milstein, maintained the idea that the vibrations of music were beneficial in that they helped keep the plants stomata open for longer periods, increasing nourishment and growth. The record places high-pitched tones over what sounds like classic incidental elevator music. Others have delved into the mystical qualities of 432Hz as being the secret frequency of growth and healing that can invigorate plants and ourselves.
Many of these ideas were subsumed by the avant-garde movements of the 1960s and '70s, which drew music from everyday objects and environmental soundscapes. John Cage's “Child of Tree” and “Branches” performed in the mid-1970s, used amplified cacti and other plant materials to produce sound. The random aspect of using different plants, how different spines of the cactus would react to being plucked, and how they would deteriorate during the performance lent itself greatly to concepts of indeterminacy…although I don't think Dr. Milstein would approve.
Organic materials have always served as a source of musical instruments. From crafting an oboe to blowing grass between your thumbs, pulling plants into a musical space, and including them in a performance is a natural progression of that relationship. But the relationship has largely been one-sided. The human is, at best, striking the plant as an object to fulfil a musical agenda, or at worst, leaves it as a passive observer in so many Instagram modular jams. To make better use of the organic in music, we have to invite the biology to contribute to its generation, and that brings us back to the electronic.
In the relatively experimental areas of electronic music, there's a lot of interest in indeterminacy. Randomness is pursued in electronic forms of chance, sampling noise, logical arrays, and voltage modulation. Touch plates have often been used to extract voltage values from body capacitance so that you can interact with the sound-producing circuits in musical and non-musical ways; couldn't plants exhibit similar qualities and influence our performances in similar ways?
Plant-Based Biofeedback in Experimental Music
Going back to the 1970s, a British artist called John Lifton created Green Music, an installation for six plants in a greenhouse. He used sensors attached to the leaves to detect bioelectrical potential changes, tiny electrical fluctuations that appeared to react to light, humidity, temperature, and touch. As people walked through, the sensors captured the changes into an analog computer, which fed them into a synthesizer. The interplay between the human presence and the plant's fluctuating bio-data created a symphony from fascinatingly ephemeral inter-lifeform interactions.
Lifton was invited to take part in a fascinating 1978 documentary called The Secret Life of Plants, directed by Walton Green and based on a book on the pain and joy plants experience by Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins. The project brought together bio-sensing artist Richard Lowenberg, synthesist Tom Zahuanec, and video artist Jim Wiseman, who, along with Lifton's plant-sensing experience, experimented with mixing the brainwaves and muscle movement signals from six dancers with the physiological output of plants to create generative audio and visual performances. [Ed.: Notably, Zahuranec had previously done his own work with plant-centric bio-sensing for musical purposes, in pieces such as Rhododendron.]
Very little of the work was used in the film, although Green Music did get more of a mention. Interestingly, it was Stevie Wonder who produced the experimental soundtrack for the film, which used no direct bioelectrical input at all. However, Richard Lowenberg has released some footage from the experiment, which you can see above.
These artists certainly weren't the only ones to experiment with plant-centric biometric sensing, of course; but regardless, work like theirs laid the foundation from which many bio-focused artists have drawn inspiration and moved things forward artistically, technologically, and ecologically.
Current artist Mileece is an internationally-renowned, multi-discipline sonic artist who has been working with bio-electrical interactions for over 20 years. She builds what she calls interactive ecologies using technology and nature to help people interact with and have a deeper appreciation for the natural world. Mileece's approach came from an artistic and ecological standpoint that only adopted technology as the potential for biological interaction presented itself.
Her intention is quite extraordinary, rolling art into ethics within biological systems for teaching computers and AI through interpreting ancient wisdom cosmology using a non-human data set. Through the development of the PiP (People's Interface for Plants) software and hardware system she combines nature and music through aesthetic sonification, leading to a community-driven, zero-emission, sustainable culture, biophilic technology and generative music.
On the other hand, musician/biologist Tarun Nayar (aka Modern Biology) pulls music from mushrooms for fun and fascination. It's all about electrodes measuring bioelectrical energy, which then triggers events in modular synthesizers. For Tarun, it's about listening to plants and sculpting his machines in response to those interactions.
It's a similar experience for Noa Kalos (aka MycoLyco), who explores biodata sonification and modular synthesis through fungi and other plants.
Mileece invented and coded her way into bioelectrical interactions, whereas musicians like Tarun and Mycolyco are using interactive plant tools that already exist. So, how could you begin to experiment with biological feedback and incorporate it into your musical output?
Tools for Making Music with Plants
One place to start is with Data Garden. It was founded by Joe Patitucci and Alex Tyson as a zero-waste record company in 2012. Through an interest in plant consciousness, algorithmic, generative music and installations, they worked with engineer Sam Cusumano to convert bioelectrical signals into MIDI. Joe would then use the data to produce harmonious compositions and successfully toured America with an installation of four tropical plants called the Data Garden Quartet. He observed that interesting things happened as people interacted with the installations, which inspired him to dig deeper into plant music.
From this came the MIDI Sprout in 2016, a device launched successfully on Kickstarter that would translate biodata from plants via a pair of sensors into MIDI to drive your synthesizers in real-time. This led to the development of PlantWave, that can do all that the MIDI Sprout could do but can connect wirelessly to your phone to be used as a source of sound. The translation is designed to be musically useful and interprets the biodata in such a way that it becomes a source of generative ambient music that can be tailored for relaxation, meditation, Yoga and so on.
PlantWave makes the experience extremely accessible, but doesn't feel like it gives the organics a true voice. While the music is being driven by the bio-feedback, the scaling and translation forces it into a musical context that, perhaps, the plant didn't intend.
For a more open-ended approach to interaction, we need to turn towards Eurorack modular—where a few modules have pioneered biometrics to control voltage translations.
The aptly-named Garden Listener from Clatters Machines not only bridges the gap between plants and music but also between MIDI and CV. As with the PlantWave, the MIDI side can be defined and scaled so that only nice sounds are produced. However, once we get into the CV side, things begin to feel a bit more direct. Changing MIDI notes generates triggers and stepped gates, and the pitch is converted into voltage. You can tame it and scale it, but you have much more scope in CV to explore microtonal changes and reactions.
Rummage from Thawney is based upon Sam Cusumano's open-source code for the MIDI Sprout. The output is much less refined than the PlantWave and features three CV/Gate outputs that interpret the MIDI data, as well as another one that takes a more raw gate and variable CV directly from the sensors.
We also have the beautifully designed Scion from Instruo Modular, which is once again based on the MIDI Sprout. Some aspects follow the same curated methodology, where you can quantize the output into harmonic flourishes. But if you let it go, Scion is capable of providing multiple channels of natural randomness in both CV and Gate signals derived from the plant sensors.
More recently, though, Instruo took the Scion design even further with the new Pocket Scion: a surprisingly affordable, on-the-go solution whose portability is absolutely perfect for working with plants in, well, their natural environment: outside. Though it's even more portable and affordable than its Eurorack-format namesake, it also boasts a huge range of new features. Its onboard sound engine allows for standalone music creation, and it can transmit information about detected data via MIDI or OSC—enabling connection to the hardware and software of your choice.
Pocket Scion can send up to five simultaneous MIDI notes, each with velocity and an assignable varying control change (CC) message. These can even be split across five MIDI channels and transmitted via the TRS MIDI output or over USB, making it possible to control several distinct devices simultaneously. The Pocket Scion application makes it easy to define the device's behavior—customizing its output to suit your personal setup. And of course, raw data can be transmitted as OSC messages, so you can use programs like Max, Pure Data, Touch Designer, or others to implement your own ways of interpreting your plant's data.
Plus, Pocket Scion includes instruments created for the device by Tarun Nayar of Modern Biology (whose work is mentioned above), and it can be played either via the built-in capacitive touch plates or external sensors. All in all, it's a surprisingly powerful piece of gear—the perfect way to get started listening to what your plants have to tell you.
Gear to Check Out
What Do Plants Have to Say?
I think it's interesting how bio-sonification has bent towards scaling the data into pleasing musical forms. We are placing ourselves in the role of interpreter, which limits the range of the bio-language to things we appreciate.
I should point out that making plant music sound interesting is not a simple thing. I've had some experience with the Sound Machines BI1 Brainterface, which takes electrical activity from your brain and translates it into CV for your modular synth. The idea is very similar to what we've been discussing here, but what fascinated me was how you decide what to do with those signals. What do you run them through? How do you turn these moving voltages and trigger thresholds into interesting happenings? That's why modular synths are the perfect place for the biodata to land, as you can build sound, pitch, rhythm, and modulation possibilities around the signals you receive.
A musician and National Trust gardener near where I live in the UK built a bio-sonification installation in one of the greenhouses at Felbrigg House last year. Martin Noble-James (Revolutionary Biscuits) has taken the concept on tour around various Norfolk gardens as "Bio-Sonification Live". Each performance will be unique as it draws on the plants present at the event. Martin sets the rules for interpreting biodata through his largely DIY modular synth. He considers the collaboration to be “animal, vegetable, and mineral”, the animal being him, plants being the vegetable, and his modular being the mineral. That feels very apt to me.
Something is lost in the codification of the signals. I can see how explorers like Mileece are finding new ways to let the natural world inform and project into ours or even bypass us entirely into new forms of technology. However, many other musicians derive a much simpler pleasure from knowing that organic energy contributes to the music they make. That interaction, the jamming between plant-based prompting and human-based conditioning, can deepen our connection to nature and appreciate the potential of plant life consciousness. But there is probably far more that’s yet to be uncovered.
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