#mileece

I can’t believe it’s the end of the semester!! Crazy how I was writing about how I didn’t know much about coding and computers and then now I am here and I have put together a circuit with a flame sensor and made a plant band!! it’s been a crazy journey and I have surprisingly enjoyed it, even though I don’t really like coding.

For the end of this project, I did the rationale and the referencing for the project documentation. (Although I thought Harrison and Gus knew more about the inner-workings of the code and circuit, so Harrison wrote a small paragraph in the rationale about the shortfalls and challenges of the project.)

As for research of this project, I found a project from 2 years ago called the PlantWave which was created by Data Garden after they did a project at the Philadelphia Museum in 2014 with musical plants. The creators then decided they wanted to make a commercialised version, so they created the PlantWave. It is an expensive little device that we made for a lot cheaper with our own materials!

The PlantWave cr: PlantWave https://www.plantwave.com/

I also found another artist who works in a similar vein to us, called Mileece. She is a British artist working in America making electronic music with plants and connecting people to nature via plant sounds. I thought she was very cool and more spiritual and artistic than the PlantWave. I also appreciated her thoughts on what she believed she was doing with her art. She also went on America’s Got Talent in 2014 and didn’t get through the auditions, which I thought was weird because her art is so beautiful and would have been a great act for the show!

Mileece. cr: NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/garden/a-haven-for-making-music-with-plants.html

My main reflections for this assignment, I really surprisingly enjoyed it. I thought I wouldn’t like the course altogether because I’m not a skilled coder, but it helped that there was no assumed knowledge and I was able to work my way up gradually and understand what was going on with making circuits and everything.

Our project started out being about music and water? But we got into researching about plants and then decided to create this performance. I think the reason why we did it is very different to what artist Mileece thinks about her art, who doesn’t see it as irony or as a paradox, but as a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. We as a group saw the irony in making music with plants and forcing a sound out of them, I almost felt sorry for the plant when we poked holes into them each week :/

Our Performance and Presentation cr: (filmed by classmate)

The Sound Builders crew went to LA recently to kick it with sound designer & music artist Mileece to discover a new world of sound. I can’t stress how much technology has evolved, but given the fact that Mileece has developed the technology that has given plants their won sound says a hell of a lot. Press play below for a glimpse into the process.