Maximilian Moser - Professor of Physiology at the Medical University of Graz, author, head of Human Research Institute - Weiz, Austria

 

 

Gymnasium am Augarten

16 April 2024

 

Gymnasium am Augarten in Vienna, April 2024 

Friendship with Nature, school project as part of the art week of the school class

Participants

Students of the Gymnasium am Augarten

Christian MICHAEL (FwN)

Maximilian Moser (FwN)

Paul Lukas Wagner (Gymnasium am Augarten)

Stefan Wirnsberger (University of Applied Arts)

Students in puberty are generally not particularly keen on meditative music and botanical explanations. What a pleasant surprise, therefore, at our project in Vienna, with the class from the Gymnasium am Augarten in Vienna! A group of enthusiastic young people, just as one hopes for as an educator.

Paul Lukas Wagner, the son of a good friend and a dedicated teacher at this school, had contacted me some time ago and asked if we could spontaneously conduct a project with the music of plants during the school's art week, and perhaps even create graphic images through this music. Thanks to the support of the Software AG Foundation, we were able to carry out the project at short notice. Stefan Wirnsberger from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna documented the project with film sequences and photos, which were then graphically altered and became part of an exhibition at Cafe Wallenstein and were shown at the Climate Biennale at Karlsplatz in Vienna (music from trees). An important goal of our projects is to establish friendship between young people and plants through music, thereby also fostering understanding of the importance of biodiversity.

Photo: Christian MICHAEL

As it was the first public project of our team, we had already practiced a bit the night before and set up the equipment in the artist café “Das Wallenstein”. Planned, the project was to take place mainly in Augarten Park outdoors, but heavy rain was forecast… and it poured! Fortunately, there was a break in the rain in the morning, and the tall maple tree by the roadside had a few fresh leaves in its lower trunk area, so we could also let a tree have its say (or rather, its music), but more on that later…

After a brief introduction, during which I spoke about the background of plant music and explained our measurement principle, a somewhat dusty houseplant was brought out and entrusted to the students. Even during the introduction, the interest and excitement of the young people was palpable: “Will plants really make music?” 

Photo: Stefan Wirnsberger

Treemuse 

The Treemuse is our new device for implementing plant music. For the first time, it can display the notes that a plant plays and show on a keyboard the keys that a piano would play if it were controlled via MIDI (a data standard used by musicians).

The plant was cleaned by the students, and then the electrodes were attached, one in the soil of the pot and one on a leaf. After a few seconds, the first piano sounds emerged, the students were thrilled and later said they never thought they would receive such complex music from the plants.

Kymatic Figures

For the first time publicly, we showed the visualisation of plant music using kymatic (kyma = Greek for wave) figures. In one of the kymatic bowls, we filled it with Lycopodium spores, which then arranged themselves in fractal structures with the music. The other bowl was filled with water. 

A circle of students was formed, holding hands, and also including the plant and the Treemuse in the circle, and here too, the device did not let us down and played music from the biological rhythms of the entire group.

Can trees make music?

As we also wanted to bring trees to make music, we took advantage of a break in the rain to make a maple alley tree in front of the art café resonate. The students followed with interest and conducted various experiments with the tree music: A particularly intimate hug with the tree was documented photographically and musically:

Do plants respond to music?

I reported on a musician (Dagmar Trichtinger-Scharf), who had practised a flute concert by Vivaldi for weeks, always the same piece. One day she connected her houseplant, which had heard it repeatedly, to a plant music device and she reported: “The plant played a theme that sounded just like Vivaldi!”. We will also present this sound example on our website so that one can convince themselves whether the music of the plant sounds like Vivaldi .

The students then proved to be very experimental: They first played Mozart to the plant and then Hip-Hop music from their phones and listened attentively for a possible response. Then all sorts of musical instruments were set on the Treemuse to achieve the most striking sound figures on the speaker.

In a parallel project of the music classes of the Gymnasium am Augarten, it is planned to add the music of the trees we recorded with further human voices and instruments and create a song from it, which will then also be available online. A wonderful interdisciplinary and cross-class work on inter-species communication.

This Zelkova tree at Wallensteinplatz in Vienna also provided appealing tree music and kymatic sound figures to the delight of students and passers-by.

Precise photos with a tripod of the kymatic figures of the plant music were then taken, which were later transformed into artworks in the context of graphic lessons and became part of an exhibition (“Sound Images as Inspiration for Innovative Urban Design”). They were also exhibited at the Climate Biennale in Vienna at Karlsplatz.

Original kymatic image (left) and graphic alteration (right)

Exhibition of the images at the art café Wallenstein

In the afternoon, the students were already very tired, and some fell asleep on the couch of Wallenstein, while others played various types of music from their phones to the plant musician and observed its reaction. 

As they seemed a bit sad to me, I joined the tired girls and told them that if things ever go badly, they should always remember: “Above the clouds, the sun always shines!”. The girls initially showed no reaction, probably too tired… 

At the end of the event, one of the girls came up to me and asked, “Did you really say that to us two hours ago, or did I just dream it?”  I replied: “Yes, that thought has helped me a lot in life when I was feeling down.” The girl responded: “I actually dreamed of the sun afterwards!” What a lovely gift, I thought, the most beautiful one of this otherwise rich day!