Music alum Brent Chancellor (MM’21) is one of five composers behind The Secret Symphony of Plants, a new album whose music is, well, rooted in data collected from plants growing in Lewiston, NY’s 150-acre Artpark.
As Chancellor explains it to NPR’s A Martínez, as part of the project, they attached electrodes to plants, recorded the plants’ bioelectric information, and then had the information converted into MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data. The MIDI technology, a type of digital sheet music, communicated sonic information to the composers. Each composer was assigned a plant.
Chancellor’s plant, and the name of his 14-minute composition performed by Lux Ensemble, is “Speedwell.” The plants, he says, emitted a variety of electrical signals.
“The thing that we did notice was smaller plants tend to have more activity. Moss is really active,” Chancellor says. “Larger plants, big broadleaf plants seem to be a little slower and have kind of a lower, longer wave of activity.”
Chancellor has joined a rich experimental music tradition at ArtPark: Among other avant-garde offerings, the site hosted Laurie Anderson’s performance of “Stereo Decoy,” a 1977 sound and media piece characterized as a kind of “duet” between the United States and Canada, with piano and violin placed on opposite sides of the river dividing the two nations.
A portion of all royalties from The Secret Symphony of Plants supports Artpark’s conservation fund.
Listen to the full interview on NPR’s Morning Edition.
