<div dir="ltr">Thanks for your comments and questions. Here are some responses:<div><br></div><div>1) With regards to the sounds, when participants touch the plants, they sing Hudhud chants of the Ifugao People, play indigenous instruments (made of wood and metal), and tell a story of remembrance (via video projection.) </div><div><br></div><div>2) With regards to location, in particular the 'distance from the Philippines', I have presented this installation in various settings over the past five years, including solemnly quiet art galleries, at lively festivals like Nuit Blanche in Toronto.</div><div><br></div><div>In 2012, I was honoured share my project at the University of the Philippines (Baguio City) at the KAPWA-3 Conference that bridges indigenous and academic cultural knowledge. </div><div><br></div><div>I shared the singing plants with Mr. Manuel Dulawan, a researcher and traditional teacher with the Ifugao Academy. He has devoted his life's work to documenting epic chants of his people (such as the Hudhud) from an indigenous worldview. </div><div><br></div><div>2) With regards to the technology, sorry Murat, I am not sure what you mean by "a ray". </div><div><br></div><div>The plants are connected to sensors using conductive thread, it is very much like spider webs. The thread is wired to a circuit board installed with capacitive touch sensors. The board is connected to a microcontroller. Software is used to assign audio and video responses. </div><div><br></div><div><div>I think the plants respond to energy in our bodies. And water is an excellent conductor of electricity/energy.</div><div><br></div><div>When I initially connected the sensors, I found that it was necessary to touch the thread directly to trigger the audio and video. However, I discovered that over time, the conductivity had spread to the entire plant. Thus making the leaves, the entire trunk, and even the pot (which had roots pressed against it) reactive to touch. </div><div><br></div><div>This process took different time periods for each plant ranging from hours to days. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 10:27 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:muratnn@gmail.com" target="_blank">muratnn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>Hi Johannes, In also tried the sites using Firefox. In my attempts, the language of plants site remained silent; but in the three video clips in the singing plants site I could hear the sounds.<br><br></div>Jo, I have a few questions. Watching/listening to your videos, a number of clearly distinguishable sounds: a humming sound (the most prevalent), clicking sounds (not as much but still prevalent), occasional chiming church bells like sound, occasional sounds of metallic hammer striking a metallic surface. I am sure there are other sounds that I missed. The sounds I listed belong to our world interfacing digitally with something belonging to the plants (in other words these sounds/singing belong to us/are our sounds interfacing with something else, presumably in/from the leaves. <br><br></div>A leaf is an analog concept. My question is this: what aspect(<b>s</b>) in the leaves is your software (a digital language) responding to? Is it a change of temperature or what? What is a ray (I think it is a term you use)? I do not think a software program can be open ended enough (at least, as far as I am aware, not in our day) to respond to such an abstraction.<br><br></div>Ciao,<br></div>Murat<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 3:01 PM, Johannes Birringer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Johannes.Birringer@brunel.ac.uk" target="_blank">Johannes.Birringer@brunel.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
<br>
thank you all for an interesting start to a discussion<br>
(on plant / art) that took me by surprise...<br>
<br>
and as I am catching up on listening, to plants (not thinking of them at all as extraterrerestial<br>
not even in metaphor but as part and parcel of the life and the ecosystems i know and grew<br>
up to live) and growth, and to ideas debated so far here on language and sonification, may<br>
I express a small scepticism, merely regarding to what it is I listen to (or perceive)?<br>
<br>
And I just wondered whether others had a similar experience? I mean getting into an experience of<br>
the work offered by Jasmeen Bains and Yi Zhou (on the on hand), and Jo Simalaya Alcampo (on the other)?<br>
<br>
>From here, in mean my location and access to the work, I tried to watch & listen to <a href="http://studioforlandscapeculture.com/#The-Language-of-Plants" target="_blank">http://studioforlandscapeculture.com/#The-Language-of-Plants</a><br>
and my elderly Firefox is silent (no sound) but shows me the website graphics and text; my Safari browser shows me a blank white canvas<br>
and I hear an interesting kind of drone music; I listen for a while, then notice that I do not associate it with anything in<br>
particular (reminding me of Alvin Lucier inspired performance and dance experiments we did in Dresden in the 90s,<br>
attaching electrodes to us (limbic system) and translating brainwaves to a few 'notes" on the Midi scale until the sound of our brains started to bore us.<br>
Can you please tell us more about your audio synthesis design and programming, and what made<br>
you arrive at the this? (what values assigned to what numbers? I think Murat asked that question also) and how did you arrive at thinking of this as "plant language"?<br>
<br>
In the case of Jo Simalaya Alcampo's installation, I could not hear any voices or any singing, <a href="http://www.josimalaya.com/singing-plants.html" target="_blank">http://www.josimalaya.com/singing-plants.html</a><br>
and would have preferred to see a 'separate' installation of the work without the laughing and cavorting opening night audience at a group show<br>
- though of course it appears the work was not performed by you, Jo, but you invited your audience to "interact" with the plants.<br>
It appears that you do propose quite a claim for your plants (in your statement on the website), however, namely that they are/become bearers of something<br>
unbearable, witnesses of trauma?:<br>
<br>
>living plants [as] keepers of story, cultural history and memory. The intent is to reconstruct what has been lost and repressed through trauma: the unspeakable.><br>
<br>
may I suggest that this would put a heavy burden on any plant, not least on ones that are corralled as mediators of information programmed into an interactive interface?<br>
(and sited in an art gallery context quite at a distance to the context of your ancestors and family in the Philippines). Well, after experiencing your own installation<br>
in the gallery, how well did the plants "play" their part?<br>
<br>
<br>
regards<br>
Johannes Birringer<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>
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<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">Jo SiMalaya Alcampo</span><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:12pt"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://josimalaya.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">josimalaya.com</span></a></font></span></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:7.5pt"> </span></b><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:7.5pt">UPCOMING:</span></b><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><u style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;color:blue"><a href="http://subtletechnologies.com/festival/festival-2015/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">Subtle Technologies Conference</span></a></span></u><br></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">Sun May 31, 10AM-12PM, Panel Discussion at Artscape Youngplace</span><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:7.5pt"> </span><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><u><span style="font-size:12pt;color:blue"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">LIFT OFF! Festival at Cahoots Theatre</span></span></u><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">Fri June 19, 8 PM: free public reading of </span></font><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10px">Hilot Means Healer </span></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">Sun Jun 21, 7 pm: Storytelling event, "Shaken Roots"</span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:7.5pt;font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span><br></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:7.5pt"><a href="http://www.asinabkafestival.org/Home.html" target="_blank">Asinabka Indigenous Arts Festival</a></span><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:7.5pt">August 19 - 23, Exhibition at Gallery 101, Ottawa</span><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p><p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"></p><p><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p></div></div></div></div>
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