For a few days this summer, you can hear plants come alive with the sound of music at Artpark.
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Electrodes are attached to a plant at Artpark to gather electrical variations that are converted into a soundscape that will become part of the immersive listening experience “UltraSound: The Secret Symphony of Plants.”
“UltraSound: The Secret Symphony of Plants” is a series of free installations where visitors can gather around the “Natural Preservative” sculpture at Artpark’s Oak Hill Project entrance and listen to a stream of ambient music coming from the greenery around them.
It sounds fantastic, but it’s a reality that organizers want to share in the series that is “a way to introduce the audience to the concept ... that there is life in plants,” said Sophie Delila Baudry, co-founder of the music collective ONNA, which is working with Artpark to produce “UltraSound.”
The process uses sonification devices that are concealed in the vegetation and hooked up to plants, turning their electrical impulses into wave signals that allow the plants to produce a meditative soundscape similar to what you might hear on a chill-out playlist.
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PlantWave devices, a popular model of plant music technology that generates ambient, electronic sounds, will be attached to plants like wild leeks, black cherry, buckthorn and moss via electrodes. Those sensors pick up on electrical activity, which is converted into a wave, interpreted as pitch, and programmed with instrumentals.
The plants are not creating the notes on their own, but rather plant music is essentially the application of musical expression to the variations of a plant’s internal processes. ONNA co-founder Coco Reilly uses the comparison of getting an EKG and visually seeing the heart’s electrical current as waves. “You use that electrical impulse and the variations in that wave to turn that into some kind of musical output. We can assign it different sounds through MIDI technology,” said Reilly.
During the three “Ultrasound” installations — July 13, July 27 and Aug. 3 — people can drop by throughout the day and listen to the music. That music will then be interpreted by composers and performed in a ticketed concert Aug. 25 in the Artpark Mainstage Theatre.
The idea is to promote conservation and help people understand the complexities of greenery, beyond mere appreciation for its visual beauty.
“If you show them that there’s electrical currents running through plants ... then the next generation wants to protect those things,” Reilly said. “And even adults, you start looking at something differently and you go, ‘Oh, this is something that needs to be preserved and protected.’ “
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Composer Brent Chancellor and artist Coco Reilly in the clearing at Artpark, where they have been working on the process that will lead to plant-generated music as part of “UltraSound: The Secret Symphony of Plants.”
The music changes as plants respond to their environmental conditions like the amount of sunlight or other nearby plants. Reilly once left the music device on at night and noticed the plant quieting as it stopped photosynthesizing from the lack of sunlight and water. “I opened my curtains in the morning, and it started going crazy.”
Plant type also determines the musical result. House plants, mushrooms and flowers can all be used to make music.
Orchestral conductor and composer Brent Chancellor, who is conducting the Artpark concert, remembers experimenting and finding that a thorny vine created music that was “a little more jagged and kind of had a rougher edge” versus moss that “was a much more mellow wave pulse.”
The concert
If the installation part of “UltraSound” is about allowing people to sonically notice the active fluctuations of plant life, the concert is about what people can do with their newfound understanding of plants’ aliveness.
Chancellor and composers Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Marcus Foster, John Kaefer and Ricardo Romaneiro will each be assigned a specific plant used in the installations. The composers then take the music produced by their respective plants as inspiration for a new composition. They can do whatever they want with the samples they are sent. Although the plant music is mostly ambient, the compositions may range in style and genre.
“Someone may be inspired simply by one of the timbres of one of the sounds or maybe an interval between two notes or small rhythm … they can build an entire work even from the smallest kind of inspirational source of musical material,” Chancellor said.
A chamber orchestra of 11 musicians will perform the pieces. Some of the composers also have requested additions like electric instruments or video and projections. Reilly and Delila Baudry will also do a live plant music demonstration at the concert. ONNA, which donates a portion of its profits to conservation-related efforts, will create and release a recording of the concert through its label Golden Wheel Records and give a percentage of the royalties to Artpark State Park conservancy.
The unpredictability of plant music can help composers think about music differently. Chancellor said oftentimes, the plants seem to be creating a consistent musical structure before suddenly pivoting in a different direction.
“There’s these little blips of inspiration where ... the pre-formed ideas we have about music and how it should evolve over time are disrupted,” he said.
Plant music can also simply help musicians connect to their environment.
“It’s really inspired me to slow down and let the music flow as it is supposed to,” Reilly said. “Nature is never in a rush.”
PREVIEW
Free installations are from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. July 13 and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 27 and Aug. 3 at Oak Hill Project Entrance at Artpark in Lewiston. Concert is at 4 p.m. Aug. 25 at the Artpark Mainstage Theatre; tickets start at $14.20. Visit artpark.net