(para)phrasing the garden is an interactive audio installation which grew out of To Hear a Shadow. It uses eight induction loops (technology often used to help the hearing impaired) to make audible, through a special receiver worn by the participant, the sounds of plants. Electrodes were used to record the electrical activity of plants. This data is then coupled with audio recordings of natural phenomena. Participants move through the “garden” encountering eight different plants, each of which “speaks” through and with the sounds that shape its existence (for example: sun, rain, bees, birds, earth’s magnetic field). Due to the irregular “pulse” of the plants that drive the playback of sounds, at times a glitching noise occurs, interrupting the organic sound, drawing our attention to the mediated nature of our experience of the natural world. (para)phrasing the garden asks us to slow down, to listen to the world around us, and consider what is taking shape right beneath our ears. 

 

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

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