acoustic arboretum proposal

San Francisco is currently experiencing a rapid transformation. As building continues, the city gets more dense and natural space is whittled away, we must actively design nature back into our lives and find new ways to engage with the natural world - for our health and well-being and to celebrate this unique place we call home.

Human-scale tiered planters. Participants are invited to play with the plants. Each plant has its own unique sound customized to its form, texture and the human gesture it provokes.

Human-scale tiered planters. Participants are invited to play with the plants. Each plant has its own unique sound customized to its form, texture and the human gesture it provokes.

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We aim to create an immersive “natural” environment that invites participants to engage with nature in a unique and unexpected way.

Acoustic Arboretum is an installation of human scale tiered plant towers. Each tier contains a different type of plant - with unique textures, colors and forms. The audience is invited to walk through the environment touching the plants. Each plant responds to the human touch with it’s own unique voice.

The result - the audience become performers exploring the possibilities for making music, collaborating with each other and experiencing plants in a new, multi-sensory way - engaging eyes, hands, noses and ears.

The Details

The installation will be composed of Bay Area native plants and grasses. The plants are animated with sounds that reflect their “personality” and the human gesture each affords. For example, an upright, reed plant may produce a sound evocative of a wind instrument when activated with an upward hand gesture.

Multiple people can touch and play the plants simultaneously creating a playful interactive and collaborative experience. The sonic environment is reliant on this participation and will evolve throughout the duration of the installation.

For Acoustic Arboretum we will continue developing the technology we used in the Grass Harmonica to create a large-scale installation with a richer vocabulary of touch and gesture sensing. It is important that the sounds associated with specific plants match their physical characteristics. We will explore a variety of sound possibilities including fully synthetic sounds and sounds derived from field recordings, modified and transformed.

The Questions We Will Be Exploring

  • Can we change the way we see and interact with nature in an urban environment?
  • How can technology facilitate our engagement with nature - rather than our estrangement?
  • How can plants and sounds change the way we experience and inhabit space?