New Media Arts

New Media Arts - Sonic Garden

Mileece / UK

Sonic Garden is a dynamic, harmonic and spacialised custom-coded organic electronic plantscape, generated by the interaction between visitors and selected plants of the bioscope. At the heart of the installation lies P i P (n. an excellent thing) Mileece’s bespoke botanical biofeedback system. P i P creates organic electronic music and light by transforming the bio-electrical currents of plants, trees and even people into responsive digital sound, light and kinetic -scapes, in real-time. It works by capturing bio-electrical currents from plant leaves and stems though tailored electrodes. The currents are fed into her EBG (electro-botani-graph), much like an EEG (electro-encephalo-graph) measures brain activity in humans. This amplifies the bio-currents, then digitises them into binary code. The resulting signals are sent to P i P’s custom software. Written in Super Collider, an object-oriented computer language, the software contains signal dynamics processing and coded synthesis modules. Plant signals are processed and, when one plant triggers its own synth, all the other plants control how and where that synth sounds. Thus, audiences are immersed in a multi-channel, harmonic, bio-generated soundscape that is responsive to plant-human interaction.

About Mileece
Mileece is a sonic artist, composer, interactive ecology designer and clean-energy ambassador.
Her debut album of algorithmic music ‘Formations’ (2003), heralded by the BBC as an “outstanding release, real musical science”, marked the beginning of her work as a pioneer in ‘organic electronic music’. In 2006, after creating a hardware bio-data processor and coded ‘aesthetic sonification’ system ‘PiP’ at her residency at the LSE, Mileece began touring her interactive immersive micro-ecology installations and performances at museums (MoMA, NYC, NHM, LA), festivals (Decibel Festival, Seattle, BHIF Festival, Bhutan), and venues (Kew Gardens, London, Sonos Studios, LA).
Combing interactive sculptures, original products, materials and instruments, her projects to 'promote ecology through technology and the arts’ have featured on prime time television broadcasts including the NY Times advertising of the year campaign (2013) and VICE Motherboard (2014) reaching over 100 million viewers.
Mileece frequently delivers presentations (PS1, NYC) and workshops (PS1, NYC, LACMA, LA) on ‘biophilic technologies’. She sits on the board of Cygnus Atratus Fuel Cell group and is the Founder of Children of Wild, a collective of practical visionaries working in renewable energy, conservation, technology and art, delivering experiences that reignite and protect our connection to the wilderness and demonstrateaccessible, responsible technology to support a culture of eco-citizenry.
 
www.childrenofwild.org