2021-2022
printed circuit boards, speaker membranes and metal stands
The Plant Quartet is a sound installation that provides an ambient listening experience of plants by using multiple Soniplasts, a custom-designed instrument that translates biodata from plants into sound. Similar as Chloroplasts, which are organelles that conduct photosynthesis in plants, a Soniplast takes bioelectric potential data from a plant and translates it to sound by using the signal to modulate a simple sine wave.
The installation puts plants at the centre of the focus: they react to the environment but in a slow and subtle manner, which is very different from the time scale and ways of perception of animals/human. The project pays attention to the relative differences in rhythmic cycles among plants and how they contribute together to a musical composition. By amplifying the ubiquitous existence of plants through sound, the objective of the project is to encourage an intimate relationship with plants in a slow, subtle and collective manner.
"Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo stalk from a bamboo stalk." - Basho
Qianxun Chen is a media artist and researcher. She works at the intersection of art, technology and language, with a focus on generative poetics, the aesthetics of algorithm and digital textuality. Her works tend to bring up artistic and non-human perspectives of the world through alternative usage of technology.
Qianxun Chen was born in 1993 in Beijing and lives and works in Bremen.
PCB Design | Concept | Notes