research-creation in development
coherence and interference is
at times, rooted and fractured,
in a plant as well as being human.
refuge and invisibility, partiality and situatedness is standing still, but it is moving, contested and elusive.
causing uncertainty and provocations, hybrid and unpredicted, generative and liberating,
thresholds and resurrection with a technology
of bio-sensing, neurodivergent.
risk-taking and resurrection,
vibrancy in the cracks
and spilling over. close your eyes and listen....................
with gestures, radical noisy alterities, intensities, frequencies in the margins of evolving sonic environments.
re-membering that root systems and seeds are the brain-child of sound to signal in solidarity
and plant consciousness is a language always in dialogue in
silence with..................our touch to animate things....personhood with a signal to frequency and amplitude..
a spatial sonic imaginary of care and a leap of radical imagination.....
the skin of plants.....
a fig leaf from my garden in alhaurin el grande, spain (2025)
Okiciya makiyokipi na iyuteya, cuke wayokapi, mitakyue oyasin.
what if we help each other acclimatize and adjust, because the truth is, we are all related.
--- Lakota saying shared by Wahinkpe Topa (Four arrows).
I am starting a research project in January (2026) at the SAT (Society for Arts and Technology) in Montreal. This will be further developed at Concordia University at the Visual Design Studios and Le Parc Research Cluster, of the Mileux Institute. A laser-cut acrylic casing will be designed and fabricated at Concordia's 3-D digital services in the Woodshop.
The overall intention is to create an intra-active audio-visual installation that makes biological data audible by capturing it directly from plants. Sensors will be attached to living plants to detect subtle electrical activity, moisture levels, and other fluctuations of biological processes. These signals will be transmitted in real time to a stand-alone open-source multisensory and multi-controller synthesizer system, which will convert the inputs into evolving sonic environments.
This process will result in a direct transformation from signal to sound, creating a constantly shifting composition shaped not by human intervention, but by the biological rhythms and responses of plants. Visitors will encounter the installation as an immersive environment where they can listen to the hidden complexity of vegetal life, experiencing how plants respond to light, humidity, and touch.By translating intricate biological processes into audible form, the project foregrounds interspecies communication, ecological awareness, and an expanded understanding of music and sound art. It proposes an intimate, visceral engagement with more-than-human worlds—revealing sonic signatures that normally remain imperceptible to the human ear.
The second phase of this research-creation project aims to explore plant communication and agency through an advanced, AI-assisted sensing and translation system that moves beyond current bioelectrical and moisture-based plant sensing. While commercially available devices such as 'PlantWave' or 'Scion' rely on surface conductivity and impedance to translate plant water fluctuations into sound, this project seeks to surpass this technicity by focusing on plant chemical language — specifically, the detection and analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as a primary medium of plant communication. Research will be rhizomatically added in collaboration with a plant biologist in Montreal.
1. Scientific & Conceptual Foundation
Plants continuously emit VOCs in response to environmental and internal cues such as light, gravity, soil, moisture, nutrients, physical contact, and herbivory. These emissions regulate physiological processes (e.g., phototropism, flowering, root orientation) and enable inter-plant communication through chemicalsignaling. This constitutes a semiotic system—a chemical language conveying meaningful information about plant states and interactions. VOC emissions are multidimensional, dynamic, and context-dependent, making them a rich target for AI-assisted interpretation.
2. Technical Objective
The goal is to build an AI-enabled sensing and interpretation framework capable of detecting and translating VOC emission patterns into real-time sonic architectures. The ML specialist will collaborate with a plant biologist to design a VOC sensing array, develop preprocessing and feature extraction pipelines, and apply pattern recognition techniques to associate emission signatures with physiological and ecological plant states.
3. Data Pipeline & Machine Learning Tasks
1) VOC capture using electronic noses, PID sensors, or miniaturized GC-MS.
2) Preprocessing: noise reduction, baseline correction, normalization, dimensionality reduction.
3) Feature extraction: temporal patterns, compound ratios, emission rhythms.
4) Pattern recognition: unsupervised clustering, supervised classification, temporal modeling (RNNs, LSTMs, transformers).
5) Interpretation and mapping to sonic parameters (frequency, amplitude, timbre, spatialization).
4. Sonic Translation & Immersive Rendering
The objective is to construct a compositional sonic ecology that reflects the complexity of plant signaling. Mapped data streams will be integrated into spatial audio environments such as possibly SAT's dome and blackbox spaces such as at Concordia's Le Parc space. AI models will feed a generative sound engine, allowing for real-time translation of plant emissions into a living soundscape, potentially across multiple networked plants.
5. Research Context & Innovation
This project innovates by shifting from electrical or moisture sensing to chemical language sensing, applying AI pattern recognition to interpret complex emission data, and producing non-reductive sonic translations. It bridges ecological signaling, machine learning, and sound art, contributing to both scientific insight and cultural discourse.
6. Anticipated Outcomes
• A functional VOC sensing and AI interpretation platform.
• A data–sound translation protocol for live installation and research.
• Empirical contributions to understanding plant VOC patterns.
• A model for transdisciplinary research-creation bridging technology, biology, and art.
7. Collaboration Framework
The ML technician will develop technical sensing, data processing, and AI infrastructure in close collaboration with a plant biologist and the artistic research team. They will participate in iterative testing with live plants, design sonic mapping strategies, and contribute to technical documentation, open-source tool development, and potentially co-author research outputs.
I am proposing a new paradigm of plant–human interaction by combining VOC sensing, machine learning, and immersive sound art. This collaboration will be instrumental in developing the computational backbone of the project and advancing both plant science and artistic research.
My research practice reflects an intellectual restlessness with the anthropocentric limits of traditional musicology and sounding. In response, I propose an approach that is integrative by design, where transdisciplinary artistic research becomes a site for cross-pollination between sound, plant science, feminist philosophy, and technological speculation.Rather than treating bioacoustics as sonic novelty or metaphor, I am invested in listening as an epistemic mode—a way of knowing the world through vibration, resonance, and relationality. This perspective introduces new ontologies into the domain of music-making: plants as co-composers; archives as evolving; scores as somatic protocols.I propose that artistic research is itself a method of thought—a generative force that not only critiques existing structures but models alternative modes of engagement. Through speculative musicology and a creative sonic praxis, my work expands the field by inventing new grammars of listening and composition that are fluid, responsive, and co-produced.This work is not only experimental—it is also field-building. By engaging with bio-sonification, AI mediation, and immersive interactive design, I contribute to the development of transdisciplinary methodologies that will be of value to emerging artistic researchers across diverse domains.
An essential strand of this project emerges from my most recent research in sensory anthropology, titled "Liquid Breath". This immersive audiovisual installation investigates the concept of sensing across species and systems, specifically focusing on plant intelligence and the fluid transmission of information and perception. Rather than relying on representations of plants or environmental soundscapes, "Liquid Breath" (image below of the sensory immersive audio-visual installation) (2025) attempts to embody vegetal temporality and responsiveness through intermedia technologies that challenge human-centric timelines and sonic structures through the mutual understanding of 'breath' as an intra-connection in musicality and somatic breathwork.
The installation was developed through a practice of attunement, in which I worked with live biofeedback from plants, translating electrical signal variations into sonic patterns that were then layered with AI-generated compositions. This process, situated within a framework of sensory anthropology, challenged conventional research paradigms by treating the installation itself as a site of knowledge production, where audiences were invited to encounter new forms of sonic, sensory and cognitive awareness.
My approach treats sensory engagement as both method and outcome—a tool for co-creation with vegetal life and a means of producing experiential knowledge about music, perception, and ecological co-dependence. The speculative archive I envision is not simply a repository of data, but a living, listening environment that extends the methodologies pioneered in "Liquid Breath" as on-going research into plant behavior. This project models a collaborative, posthuman deep listening practice in which affect, sensation, and sonic intimacy generate new epistemologies for music research, adjoining the research-practice of the late musician and American experimental composer, Pauline Oliveros.
