When Firefly launched our Firefly V.2, we had a SF launch party with upwards of 3oo people in attendance. The best part of the night for many of us was getting the chance to see Mileece I’Anson’s music installation in our conference room, where she hooks plants up to electrodes in order to modulate the electromagnetic current generated by them.
Yes, that really did happen. In our conference room..as if you needed more proof that Firefly creates magic. ????
From an earlier Motherboard article on Milceece’s work:
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 bio-electric emissions coming off living plants. The micro-voltage then gets sucked into her self-authored 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 music can have a pleasing aesthetic articulation then hopefully we all can give a greater damn about our environment.
While some may see the paradox in an organic medium generating electronic music, Mileece does not. She sees this as a symbiotic relationship, a vital one, and one that hints to a larger relationship she’s been trying to unify, which is that between humans and nature.
