Generative Music w/ Botany
Hello! Welcome Back! Hope you have enjoyed so far deepening in the realm of Botany and now being able to experience how this connection starts to have a musical output. In the last post I talked about Symbiotic Sound from Spads Electronics. Today I will show you a bit more of the process using another device / controller : Touch Me by Playtronica.
Playtronica is a Russian based creative studio that recently launched two controllers, Playtron and Playtronica. Both electronic devices convert touch into midi notes, making possible to use anything that conducts electricity as a midi controller.
How it works: It creates a circuit between the human body and the mean of conduct you pick, yet this mean must be able to conduct electricity. The concept is to close the circuit in order trigger a signal. To determine the signal, it measures the electrical resistance between the means of conduct which is later passed on to a computer by USB cable and for example, as MIDI input for your DAW.
The main difference between playtron and Touch me is that Playtron has 16 keys which you can assign. By completing the circuit you will trigger the specific key that you are touching. In other terms you can create your own 16 key piano. On the other hand Touch me measures the difference in resistance between both plates, has in built 12 different types of scales plus one full chromatic key scale. Depending on the scale you select, the signal will fluctuate between the notes of the chosen scale.
This whole concept arised by a Finnish visionary and inventor, Erkki Kurenniemi that researched and worked in the direction of the intersection of music, electronics, body, futurism, philosophy and art. He created DIMI - S, in 1971. By using handcuffs and wires you could connect up to six people. The central board measured the electrical resistance between the players and then triggered a sequence of musical tones (See following video).
Playtron
Once I did my first interactions with both modules I decided to try Touch Me with one of my plants, Lily (Heartleaf Philodendron). The reason why I chose this module over Playtron is due that :
Touch Me measures difference in resistance based on the contact areas. Playtron only needs its circuit to be complete and sound does translate the changes in the resistance measures.
Touch me has 12 in-built scales aside from a full chromatic scale.
Using Touch Me the plant can complete the circuit by itself so there’s no need for me to interact in the process rather than the recording.
I wanted to experiment making Generative Music with Lily. This concept can be described according to Brian Eno as :
Generative music is a term popularized by Brian Eno to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system. (Wikipedia)
If you wish to deepen on the concept of Generative Music, you can try this interactive experience.
The following video shows the output of my experiment. I must say i’m very pleased with the outcome, nevertheless there is yet much to observe, record and analyze.
The Ableton Project shows us in Orange the MIDI recording from Lily (Heartleaf Philodendron) with no human interaction nor stimulus. It’s very interesting how it constantly fluctuates yet there are certain moments in time where just one steady key is hold. In this experimentation the plant was not able to hear playback, again I tried to isolate as much as I could any interference that could differ from the concept of Generative Music and capturing the essence of Lily.
Big thanks to the crew of Playtronica that published this work on their Social Media and are waiting for my new live performance.