Yearly Archives: 2023
17 posts
poaceae
Poaceae is a stabile wind chime sculpture providing a gentle auditory sensory experience while exploring a hybrid representation of Oat plants and Salt Hay. Using tall bendable stalks, my stabiles mimic the sort of improvised dance grass stalks do, allowing them to spread their seeds in wind gusts and breezes. Instead of florets and seeds, the inflorescence on each stalk will be small chimes that sound while the stabile moves.
In my work, I intend to create opportunities to explore cultural attitudes toward vulnerability and radical acceptance. These themes show up in my stabile sculptures, stemming from my research delving into our intricate relationship with plants. Two specific plants, Oats and Salt Hay, belong to the Poaceae family of grasses. Both hold profound social and cultural significance in Mi’kma’ki / Nova Scotia. Oats were introduced as a crucial staple cereal, while Salt Hay, an indigenous plant, played a vital role in sustaining livestock during the early colonial era in the Maritimes.
Tuning Tethers (2023) Handmade Paper Mobile
Jardins sous la pluie / Gardens in the Rain (12:31)
Claude Debussy and B Mosher
2023
Samples of ultrasonic Plant soundings, and MIDI Score of Estampes Nr.3 (Jardins sous la pluie)
Plants can emit species- and stress-specific ultrasonic sounds that can help us identify plant health. This discovery was published in the March 2023 issue of Cell by researchers at Tel Aviv University and expands our understandings of bioacoustic signalling in plants.
Jardins sous la pluie / Gardens in the Rain samples these sort of ultrasonic sounds, mapping them onto a rendition of Claude Debussy’s Estampes Nr. 3 as played by Katsuhiro Oguri, released in an open source MIDI musical score. In this work a tomato plant’s staccato “blops” sound becomes a chorus of plants blopping out Debussy’s harmonic ode to lush garden rainfall.
To have allow the composition to speak back to plants the melody has been pitched back up to the hypersonic frequencies plants sound in. It also has been pitched down to subsonic frequencies below most human hearing, frequencies which plant roots have been known to relay signals through.
Growing Days ponders the effects of periods of exponential growth have had on their personal histories. Growing days mark out time between moments of intense activity, followed by a deep need for rest. The implications of these swinging cycles of fluctuations are felt, not only personally but culturally and ecologically. From the personal learning curve that is a part of gaining new skills like baking, to the frothy optimism of economic interests in verging markets, catching us up in the currents of swells and breaks.
