In the murmurs of cells and the voices of the animals, we hear solar energy refracted into sound. Today all living voices […] are animated by the Sun.
— David George Haskell, Sounds Wild and Broken (2022)
Plants are the first transducers. They take in light and air and convert them into the chemistry every other living thing feeds on — quietly, continuously, in one direction only.
Sound Garden inverts that transaction. 16 potted plants stood across an open field, each fitted with a capacitive electrode, a small speaker at its base, and LEDs. Touch a plant and it gives light back and moves the air around it. The body that normally absorbs and converts becomes the one that emits.
Sound Garden ran continuously, day and night, across both days of the Off-Kilter Festival in Sissach (CH), which commissioned it in 2023.
credits:
Concept/Realisation – Sébastien Vaillancourt
links:
https://www.offkilter.space
