BioRhythms: Artistic research with plants, real-time animation and sound

Abstract

In the video series ‘Biological Rhythms’, electrical signals generated by plants are sonified and captured to drive real-time data visualisations. From this live data, we will create a series of eight video pieces ( see links to draft versions of the first four in ‘Recent work, video links’ section below). Living plants and the human body may appear to be very different entities, but they have many underlying confluences. Once such confluence is that both generate bio-electrical signals that pass through bodily systems. In ‘Biological Rhythms’ we will use these signals to generate real time visualisations, revealing the unseen bioelectrical rhythms of plants. Through the biological sciences, we understand plant meta- processes such as osmosis and photosynthesis, yet because their cellular structure is so delicate, plants are notoriously hard to study in fine detail. Sonifying plant signals affords a method to explore their bio-rhythms in an accessible form for a non-scientific audience. As part of our bespoke and innovative method, the electrical signals from plants are converted to audio and passed through the program Touch Designer, where the plant signals activate complex geometrical forms. Simon Howden composes 'human' music which is mixed live with the plant signals, allowing us to explore co-creation with living plants as a posthuman mode of artistic research.