Taking a specialised electronic device and laptop computer into the streets around Red Hook, Brooklyn, we attached probes to the plants that were growing out of cracks, ditches, berms, and crevices. These gentle probes read the electrical resistance between two points on a plant’s leaf or stem. This resistance was then interpreted as MIDI data by the computer, where we could generate music-like soundscapes composed by the plants and mediated by us through music editing software. These soundscapes accompany video portraits closely observing each plant as we 'listen' to them, set to a backdrop of field audio recordings.
Listening to Our Plant Neighbours (2019)
Other works by Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux
Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux
A Wardian Case (documentation) (2022)
Documentation of the work A Wardian Case, in which plant cell signals from flora living on Te Kawau Tumaro o Toi Kawau Island are made resonant in chorus and cacophony.
Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux / Colleen Coco Collins
Radicant (2024)
Nineteenth century botanical models are transposed using 3D scanning and CAD technologies into a virtual space, and are accompanied by the words and voice of Colleen Coco Collins, who traces the stories of each plant and fungus represented.