Plant Data, 2021
Two-channel sound system 24 hour loop
Fraxinus excelsior trees, laptops, speakers
office carpet, cables, data records




Museu História Natural

MHNC–UP


[ listen ]




Pushing back on biosensing techniques to
open up new ideas on Plant Intelligence with
latest data acquistion technology from the
Laboratory of Plant Ecology, Ghent University, 
Belgium. Plant Acoustic Emission data (AE)
is the closest contemporary science has come
to understanding the sound of plants. Despite
many attempts and interpretations, Plant Music
has never been recorded as audible sound, only
numerical data. There are two sound systems in
the work, both based on AE data and extruded
into two time signatures. The first system plays
thousands of events in humanised real time and
the second system interprets the solar path
where sound arcs in and out of the piece over
24 hours. Solar arcs are significant in AE data
studies. Lying nearly dormant during the night
(solar altitude: zero degrees) activity builds as
the sun rises to noon (solar altitude: ninety
degrees) and then subsides again as the earth
spins on it’s axis.


Text: Alice Bonnot


Collaboration with Mariana Sottomayor
and Stefaan Van Leuven of Soulwax