Meet the Sonic Artist Making Music with Plants: Sound Builders

Subscribe to MOTHERBOARD: In this episode of Sound Builders, we went to Los Angeles, to meet with Mileece. She s a sonic artist and environmental designer who s developed the technology to give silent seedlings a portal to their own sonic expression. Channeling a plant s sentience into an instrument is no obvious feat. Mileece s background as an audiophile and programmer dovetailed to turn a garden into an organic medium for music. She pulls this off by attaching electrodes to leafy limbs, which conduct the bioelectric emissions coming off living plants. The microvoltage then gets sucked into her selfauthored software, turning data into ambient melodies and harmonic frequencies. It s simply not enough for these green little squirts to just spit out noise. All this generative organic electronic music must sound beautiful, too. As a renewable energy ambassador, Mileece s larger goal behind her plant music is to enhance our relationship with nature. And if plant musi