It Turns Out Plants Make Noise as They Grow—and a New Sound Art Show at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Gives You a Chance to Listen

You may have heard that playing music can help your garden grow,
but have you ever considered listening to the plants themselves?
That’s what sound artist Adrienne Adar is
encouraging visitors to do at her exhibition at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which allows
humans to hear the subtle, normally inaudible sounds of plant
life.

She hopes the show will deepen people’s connection to the
natural world. For audiences to be able to hear plants, Adar told
the New York
Times, “adds a level of information they didn’t have
before, and they think of the plant differently.”

The Los Angeles-based artist’s practice is inspired by
scientific research that shows that plants, much like animals, are
sentient beings. Adar cites, for instance, the work of Monica
Gagliano, an ecologist at the University of Western Australia, who
has researched plants’ cognitive abilities and whose experiments
suggest that plants can hear water and grow toward the sound.

Adar has created hand-made sensors that are buried in the
soil or inserted into cacti and succulents. The sensors pick up the
vibrations plants make when they are touched by humans, which
visitors can listen to through special headphones.

“To audiolize, to listen to them, I think gives [plants] more of
an individuality; to understand that they are doing things all the
time and moving and feeling things in their environment,” Adar told
the Brooklyn
Eagle.

Adar has also installed a powerful microphone amid a field of
freshly planted corn. The amplified sounds are projected through
large yellow horns, allowing viewer to tune in to the faint, almost
otherworldly sounds of ears of corn growing.

The experience “can be a little bit meditational,” she told
NPR. “Children were
sitting on the ground and putting their heads in the lower horns
and just hanging out.”

“Sonic Succulents: Plant
Sounds and Vibrations at Brooklyn Botanic Garden by Adrienne
Adar” is on view at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens visitor center
and throughout the grounds, entrance at 990 Washington Avenue,
Brooklyn, May 21–October 27, 2019.

The post It Turns Out Plants Make Noise as They Grow—and a
New Sound Art Show at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Gives You a
Chance to Listen appeared first on artnet News.