installation of mine

I have been working on this installation for a while now.. and surprisingly, i am still working on it.. We are taking this experiment to Kammer Festival in Germany this august, so i hope it all goes well and i can add some pictures afterwards expressing how it all went..

here is a little description of my idea:

This installation is an exploratory journey into the relationship between a plant and a human. A bioacoustic art vision from the perspective of the plant. Do plants respond to humans, animals or their environment? How do the bioacoustic principles of the plant work? This installation will artistically and visually capture the conversation between a person and a plant. With this installation, an "environmental acousmatics" effect is going to be perceived: a visual cause/effect between the sound sources of a plant and a human's perception. The whole installation is going to be a sum of these following dimensions: a sound-producing component, a sound transmitting element and sound modifying parts. Plants are biotic, sensitive components, but how sensitively do they respond to different sonic frequencies? If they do at all, then you will experience a curious sonic intimacy between yourself and a plant. With this installation I am trying to note that it’s possible to observe a diversity of sounds in a natural environment that aren’t immediately audible to the naked ear.

In order to find out how plants respond to different sonic frequencies, i am going to use a plant called MIMOSA PUDICA (‘the sensitive plant’) which produces an immediate phsyical response if you touch it. It closes its leaves and reopens it after a few minutes. In this installation I am going to use a microphone so that a person can ‘talk’ to the plant, and there will be loudspeakers installed within an isolation box where the plant is going to be placed. When the person sends particular frequencies (high, med or low) through the microphone, the plant will provide the viewer with an immediate response (the closure of its leaves). Furthermore, there may be some additional "games" applied in order to communicate with the plant. For example, triggering the incoming signal with MAX MSP by adding some DSP's to the incoming signal (changing the pitch of a person's voice, compressing/expanding, adding some filters, delaying,etc.) and playing it back to the person though headphones. In order to achieve this additional amplifiers should be provided. In this game, we would imitate the plant's response.

So yeah, i am using MAX MSP software.. and now i am working on the video part of this 'game'.. so so exhausting it is..

anyway, keep on working milky-moo