I think the reason why I got a degree in
Sonic art it was because it didn't have
a definition but I'm not is a
traditional musician and I thought about
what I was doing I was like yeah I want
to make a mouth for a plant in this
episode of sound builders were in Los
Angeles to meet my lease she's a sonic
artist programmer an environmental
designer who's known for making music
from plants hey hey my lease yes hi
Samantha hi how do you do
oh good thank you we're in my garden now
outside of my studio why is it that you
do what you do I'm an audiophile
you know like I grew up my parents had a
sound recording studio and I was very
very tiny and it was all analog I mean I
just I was really young but I guess I
got the like I got the kind of the bug I
became the resident artist at the London
School of Economics Innovation Centre is
like 20-something and at the time it was
not like it is now and through that I
got to do the plant thing
I don't be music I understand frequency
harmonic ratios and I understand
spectrums so sound design okay so this
is a piece of music that I made by
originally I cut out some plant music
that I really liked and um I started
like creating a structure did you
collaborate with anybody on everything
um you know as usual like all the sounds
I nourished
Oh
sometimes the input is analog like by
omission bio emissions are the current
that comes off of living things the way
that it works is that you have a plant
and you you know put an electrode on it
which can be used to conduct that
current coming off the leaf and then it
goes into an amplifier and then the
amplifier gets turned into binary code
and then software takes that data and
animates sound the sound is not a sample
it's all generative it's like organic
electronic music the world I want to see
is where we use technology to enhance
our relationship with ourselves we are
nature and we are ecology ecology is the
interrelationship between all things we
are living things and so I wanted to do
something original the landscaping and
the designs that I make oh because I
want habitats to exist for myself and
for other creatures my lease took us to
one of these habitats an acoustic
playground that she's been building at a
local school as part of her tree weaver
project
so this is basically a tree weaver
project this is the first tree weaver
pod and what that is is a series of
different ones that will be sort of
spattered everywhere and then they can
all communicate with each other so you
could send or receive you know truly
report data from anywhere so you might
want to check out what's going on the in
the pod you know in New York the tree
Weaver project is to bring environments
from one place to another in here we'll
have interactive soundscape star and
also interactive plants you have a live
stream live audio-visual stream from the
Amazon with biofeedback data projected
on the dome and so these kids will have
a really intimate sensation of being in
the forest and that will be their
library your sonic arts is natural yet
artificial because it's organic but then
you translate it into electronics so how
do you feel about it in this sort of
paradoxical sense and how much of it
seems sort of paradoxical to you and
times the plant music with the organic
versus the electronic stuff I don't find
it paradoxical as much as I find it
symbiotic because the sonification of
those signals in that context creates
such crazy music and and I could never
have made it nor could anybody else and
you never know what's going to happen I
thought how would it work and I thought
would jazz band you know you have like
players in a jazz band and everyone can
solo it's always harmonically
proportionate
I do think plant sentience I know that
sent in no one in science can answer to
you what consciousness is no one but
what we do is we like to say
consciousness is derived from having a
central processing unit as a brain which
plants do not have but they do have
conglomerations of tiny cells that
function like brains because they can
take information they can assess
information and they can make decisions
about that information and they can
update it in real-time the intention is
just to relay whatever they're doing and
do it in a way that people can
understand so so you want to be a medium
in that way rather than a composer in
the sense of the plant stuff yes I'm
sure I'm a facilitator in a way this is
mostly running off the GSR which is the
galvanic skin response whereas the
interactive stuff runs off of the EEG
which is the election cipher graph or
the biosensors this is just coming in
analog there's like cables that come
around the back which is not optimal
because you've got quite a long stretch
of micro voltages that are coming down
here it's just noisy then you've got all
the supercollider synthesizers so this
is basically that replaces all of my old
analog gear I'm using it to do the
wireless part so that on the plant
itself like right here will sit a board
probably about that size and that on top
of it and then you'll be able to see the
data that we saw on the computer in your
iPhone you can put proximity and touch
sensors that we were using earlier for
the soundscape and then you can have
something like if an ant crawls or
something crawls over something you
would you would know the benefit for me
to run this wirelessly is that basically
they'll be much better
much better quality of signal which will
make it much more sensitive and we can
do much more with it and we can also
predict the Amazon and put a transponder
on it and get that data out of the
jungle this is phenomenally diverse
where you can deal with this endless
if we create technologies that interface
better with parts of our own ecology
parts of our own nature we enhance our
lives most of the things I do oriented
towards that and the reason why I will
go through endless hours struggle and
just the the kind of whole process of
like shoot me please just just
please shoot me and it's because I'm
dedicated to that principle beyond
anything else
I think it's just human nature to always
push the envelope in new creative ways
coming up with interesting controllers
it's kind of a democratization because
not everyone can afford a piano or
violin we're always trying to bend the
laws of physics and experimentation as
part of our jobs once you understand
what is excellent sound it's just a
matter of engineering it I think we have
that covered