After the first The Autogenerative Secret Music of Plants, this time we make a bucket of oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) play the modular synth and the FM synth Korg OpSIx. They tend to be on one side quite noisier than the plants, but on the other, they are a quite thoughtful type. And they sing melancholic tunes.

Thanks to the Instruo module SCÍON, which is a biofeedback sensor built into a quad random voltage generator based on the MidiSprout by Datagarden, the biofeedback data gathered from the plant are transformed into musically useful control signals, like CV and gates. Tiny fluctuations in surface conductance on the leaves stimulate control voltage and gate signal changes that are used to modulate and control all the modules of the eurorack synth. The CV and gates are also sent to the CV-to-MIDI module Sweet Sixteen by Tesseract to be transformed into MIDI CC (control changes) and sent to the Korg OpSix, where they modulate the FM operators ratio and the synth FXs.

The result is an ever-changing, sweet and intense, composition that leads the listener to the secret worlds generated by the plant, and by the succession of micro and macro phenomena.

Everything in the Universe is strictly intertwined, and we believe that if we could hear this entanglement, this would be the sound.

“The Secret Music Of Plants” first version was Recorded Live on Saturday 1 June 2019 at the Japanese Garden in Duthie Park, Aberdeen, for the event “Sonic // Art // Botanical Garden” organized by Wagon.

Audrey The Plant: Bio-feedback module Scíon by Instruō
Marta NoOne: Guitar, Fx, Modular Synthesizer, Loops
Ugo Vantini: Synbals (Synthesized Cymbals connected with the Modular Synth via contact microphones)