Basil Plant Music: An Interspecies Listening Session
by Nick Gent
Enter a quiet interspecies listening session with a living basil plant as it becomes part of the musical process. Using plant biofeedback, changing electrical conductance measured at the plant is translated into musical control data, allowing the basil’s changing activity to influence notes, rhythm and sound before I respond with my own instruments and composition. Basil has a long history as an aromatic culinary and traditional herbal plant, with associations of vitality, restoration and wellbeing across different cultures. Rather than treating the plant as simply an instrument, this session invites another kind of listening: plant, technology, environment and human musician becoming a temporary ensemble. This is largely unedited footage from the original recording session, preserving the pauses, fluctuations and unexpected musical gestures as they happened.
