Gregory Lasserre, Anais met den Ancxt: Akousmaflore: Sensitive and Interactive Musical Plants

Title:

Akousmaflore: Sensitive and Interactive Musical Plants

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Medium:

Plants, computer, sound system

Artist Statement:

Akousmaflore is a small garden composed of living musical plants or flowers, which react to human gestures and light contact. Each plant reacts in a different way to contact or heat by a specific sound. The plant language occurs through touch and the close proximity of the spectator. Our invisible electrical aura acts on the plant branches and encourages them to react. The plants sing when the audience lightly stroke or pass in the immediate vicinity to them. A flower concert is created.

In our artwork, we create hybrids between plants and digital technology. Plants are natural sensors and are sensitive to various energy flows. Digital technologies permit us to have a relationship with plants and sound. We display the effects of random data flow and plant interaction.

Our body continually produces an electrical and heated aura, which cannot be felt. This phenomenon exists in our immediate environment. In our research, the ‘design of the invisible’, our approach is to animate that which we cannot detect. Mixing reality with imagination, we propose a sensory experience that encourages us to think about our relationship with other living things and energy. Indoor plants can have an ambiguous definition that swings between decorative object and living being. It is said that ‘inanimate objects can react when given human attention. Through Akousmaflore, plants let us know of their existence by a scream, a melody or an acoustical vibration.

scenocosme.com/akousmaflore_en.htm