Resumé
These days several global problems, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the Six Mass Extinction, and the climate- and biodiversity crisis, show us, that we need to find a new way of coexisting with nature. This MSc thesis paper in Audio Design/Information Technology, seeks to investigate how sound and sensual knowledge can be used to show plants from an alternative perspective, and create a new awareness and empathy towards these organisms, and in a broader sense, towards nature.
Plants have for thousands of years been perceived by us humans as passive and silent organisms. During these last two decades, studies in plant science have shown that plants are instead active organisms, who generate clicking noises in their roots, inaudible to the human ear without technology. This project then asks whether the alternative perspective on plants could be to listen to their roots and to show plants as sensual beings.
We humans are sensual beings and much of our knowledge about the world and ourselves are gained through our senses. By means of technology, we now have the possibility to listen to plants and gain a sensual knowledge about them. What can this teach us about plants and our relationship with them? With an experimental and poetic approach - linking scientific and artistic methods - this project set up sound experiments and studied plants’ clicking noises and my relation to the plants, by use of post-phenomenology, acoustic ecology and rhythmanalysis.
Using sound recordings of the plants’ clicking noises, my body’s sounds, and of the sound environment in my home, this project seeks to create poetic sound compositions as a means to convey my sensual knowledge and my reflections about plants. This is an attempt to show plants from an alternative perspective: as sensual organisms. This can hopefully create new reflections in the listener about plants and our relationship with them, and further, create curiosity to learn more about nature and how we coexist with it.
Through the sound experiments in this project, I was able to listen to three plants from my home and study them and my relation to them. All three plants generated many more clicking noises in frequencies that are audible to the human ear, than I expected before the experiments. The plants seemed so still visually, but the sound experiments made it clear that a lot is going on in the plants’ roots. Even though I could not understand what these clicking noises meant, I gained a deeper sensual knowledge about them and my relation to them.
During the rhythmanalyses, the rhythms of the plants, my body and my home existed simultaneously. Some of the sounds from my body mixed with the plants’ clicking noises, so I could not tell if the noises came from the plants or myself. Sound deleted some of the visual borders between me and the plants. It also became clear to me, that even though I tried to be as still as possible, so that I could hear the plants’ clicking noises, it happened that I unwillingly nearly drowned their noises with the sounds from my body: my stomach rumbling, my heartbeat etc.
There was a technical problem regarding the contact-microphone which was used to capture the sounds from the plants’ roots, in that it generated very loud white noise. It was not possible to edit the noise out of the recordings without damaging the plants’ clicking noises, which led me to the decision of synthesizing the clicking noises. The sound compositions in this project are therefore
drafts and should give an insight of how the sound compositions could sound like, had there not been white noise from the contact-microphone. There are 8 sound compositions in total, one of them can be listened to beneath (it’s in Danish though).
I found that there was a particular challenge in conveying my sensual knowledge about plants and my relation to them in a poetic manner, without overwriting the plants’ ‘voices’. In other words, how can I make poetic sound compositions that preserve artistic qualities, without overwriting the plants’ clicking noises by putting them in a human, artistic context? If we want to understand plants and other creatures, then we must stop adding them human qualities and instead listen to them the way they are. Are poetic sound compositions then the way to convey my sensual knowledge about plants and my relation to them?