There are sensors connected to a plant at one end. At the other of the sensors is a plug inserted into a box that is a mess of cables and flashing lights. Speakers play sounds corresponding to interactions with the plant. Someone else is listening. I’m waving my arms around, fishing for words, trying to reel in some shape of comprehension.

I cannot think of a single instance, while demonstrating this project, that I experienced indifference. Typically, people’s fascination towards this budding idea that there is a perceivable, inter-actable, response from a species who hasn’t even been afforded the notion of agency, let alone complex life, in any form. 

It’s exciting when people become intrigued. They want to ask questions. I can almost see cognition kicking in, lights going on. I do not mean this in a way that could be construed as patronising, quite the opposite, a curious and inquisitive human is a wonderful thing.

The sound comes from the speakers. They ask, “Is this what the plant sounds like?”. No must be the answer. Anything else would be a lie. 

It’s an understandable question, when stepping towards the unimaginable. The imagination projects onto this non-human entity a humanness: “Maybe in some near-sci-fi way we will be able to ‘communicate’ with plants? Maybe it will be like a First Contact moment from an alien-encounter story?” I explain that what we are hearing is the result of the plants voltage only, it’s internal electricity, a biological signal which is measured between two sensor points. BUT, I emphasise, this is no less remarkable. We can interact and hear how the change of electrical signal changes the sounds coming from the machine. These are examples of signs of life, small recognitions that this entity, this plant, is detecting changes in the environment. And in response, changes in biosignals become audible. Caution is needed here, intention and meaning can not be interpreted from this moment anymore than a clinician is able to ascertain something about your personality from an ECG. It is impossible.

Online, I’ve seen examples of people making music with plants, presenting something that looks like a spiritual connection, a musical synergy. Most of the time, I think it’s an illusionary moment that is fraught with moral garbage. I would argue that such fantasy is unnecessary. We can be amazed at the astounding complexity of life without the bullshit.

Zoë Schlanger’s book ‘The Light Eaters’ (2024) is an exploration of the recent science on plant intelligence, plant communication and plant memory. Ideas that had once been decried and ridiculed are now undergoing a rethink in light of new research and repeatable experiments. “Contaminated by Humanness” is an idea from Schlanger’s book. This idea of Humanness is a polite way to announce Anthropocentrism. Anthropos is Greek for Human. Anthropocentrism is the placing of the human experience and perspective central to all. For example, for things to be understood, hold value and meaning, they must be translatable into a position relevant to the Human. Failing to ‘See’ other positions, other Others, as of value, meaning, and importance has brought ‘Humans’ of modernity to the worst versions of ourselves. Schlanger’s suggests that there are many more perspectives of the world that may remain truly unimaginable, yet remain alongside us, permanently in co-existence.

In this project I describe the sound-making devices of the synth as akin to Google Translate. It enables us to perceive, attempt to comprehend, and engage with the signal of the lifeiness of non-human others. In this awareness-making moment perhaps perspective might shift. What’s been seen cannot be unseen, so too what has been heard can not be unheard. I think it’s important to not corral these sounds into a classical framework of what music is. I want the unexpected musicality to hold its own space. And then we can decide to simply participate without overlaying some limited conceptual idea such as music definitions. We can start by learning to have bigger ears.

Writing this makes me think of an early, and very formative, event. I can pinpoint the moment my ears expanded.

Sometime in the late 80’s I hitchhiked to Christchurch. One day I was walking in the square in the city centre. I had just brought a cassette called 2X4, a collection of live recordings from a German industrial group, Einstürzende Neubauten. I had read about them in fanzines but had never heard them. Invercargill was a long way from Berlin. Until today.

Walking through the Square, Cathedral to the Left, the pub Warners ahead, my ears were confounded and lost by these raw, unfamiliar sounds on my cassette Walkman. What I heard gave me NO reference to help me understand the sound. Percussive machinery, confronting angular rhythms, and Bargelds’ high-pitched vocalisations felt indigestible. Even though it was both fascinating and disconcerting I had to stop listening for a moment, just to catch my breath. 

Removing the headphones the perplexity remained as I felt like I was STILL listening to the band.

All around the Square was the sound of construction sites, building projects in various forms of ascent. Skeletal towers full of labourers beating frames into shape. Concrete-mixers, angle grinders, hammers, saws, power tools and brute force all at work. I heard it all.

I also heard, I realised, what I needed in order to listen to the cassette. The builders had no pretense on being musicians, but the musicians used the tools of construction and destruction to create songs and entertainment. Tools containing specific utility, identity, became challenging in the hands of another. Not so much bending it out of shape, but into a newer shape. A shape that encompassed both this world of construction and also that world of creative exploration. The building world became contaminated by a musicness.

Many of these building never survived the earthquakes 30 years later. But I still hear ‘music’ where it isn’t.