What I learned from playing musical duets with plants
Music of the Plants
The device for the music of the plants, a real musical instruments for our green friends, is based on a variation of the Wheatstone bridge, where one or more fixed resistances and a variable one are used to measure variations of impedance (electrical resistance). In this case, what is being measured is the electrical resistance in the living tissues of plants. These variations can then be transduced into a variety of different signals, including MIDI for digital musical instruments, such as synthesizers.
Fluctuations in the electrical potential of tissues can be measured in every living being. In animals and humans, these can also be related to different emotional states.
When we listen to music coming from a plant, we can get an idea of the reactivity of the plant to its environment and its ability to communicate and learn.
The Music of the Plants provides a fascinating new field of exploration and research around the topic of plant consciousness. On one hand, hearing sounds produced by a plant offers a direct feedback of the state of the plant in its environment, something that anyone who has a beloved plant can enjoy. On the other hand, it allows musicians and music lovers to deepen their ability to listen.
As journalist–activist Professor Michael Pollan puts it in the foreword of Mancuso and Viola’s book “Brilliant Green: the Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence”:
“Most people who bother to think about plants at all tend to regard them as mute, immobile furniture of our world – useful enough, and generally attractive, but obviously second-class citizens in the republic of life on Earth. It takes a leap of imagination over the high fence of our self-regard to recognise not only our utter dependence on plants, but also the fact that they are considerably less passive than they appear, and in fact are wily protagonists in the drama of their own lives -and ours.”
Copyright 2017/24 - Simone Vitale