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Information Experience Design (MA)

Dan Ouyang

Dan Ouyang is a digital artist from China, based in London and Guangzhou.

She is passionate about creating immersive narrative spaces through different media, researching the wonderful experiences created by multi-sensory and cross-media narratives.

Her artistic practice mainly revolves around topics such as natural aesthetics, women, economics, philosophy, etc., combining physics and metaverse, nature and man-made. She tries to bring the audience into the constructed environment through 3D music, digital art, interactive installations and other media, and embark on a journey of a possible future.

Record the water sound of plant roots

This project looks at human beings' excessive interference with nature and reflects on the relationship between human beings and nature under anthropocentrism.

By recording the water sound from the roots of different plants to design the language between plants and water, we built a world. "Water gives birth to all things, and the great hiding place is in water." Water is the god of plants. After research, it is found that the "water language" of plant roots can help plants convey different information and store memories, which is the embodiment of plant consciousness.

Human Centered Lab extracted the water language in different plant roots and analyzed the meanings represented by different water sound frequencies, such as growth patterns and appearance characteristics, deciphering the "secret of water language". Based on this, they created a water mantra scripture belonging to plants - “Mantra of the Water God". Disturbing the consciousness of plants by playing sounds of specific frequencies as a means of controlling plants.

The work establishes a museum of freak plants, controls the plants through the spell of the water god, and creates a show of plant freaks. In this way, we hope to bring the audience into our worldview and experience nature after human over-intervention in a new dimension. In the end, plants will become "grotesque works of art" created in the human carnival of strange aesthetics.

Starting from the relationship between water and plants, we imagine that water molecules in plants can store plant information
Image recording of experiment
Image recording of experiment

The sound of water in the plant root

Through our research we found that, When water moves through the xylem, the hollow tubes that transport water and nutrients within plants, it can create a faint hissing or gurgling sound. This sound is typically too quiet for the human ear to hear without amplification.

And the experiment has shown that the frequency of plants drinking water partly reflects the growth status of plants. The faster a plant drinks water, the healthier it grows; on the contrary, the slower it drinks water, the more it tends to die.

We used a stethoscope to listen to and record the frequency of water drinking at the roots of different plants, and used software to identify frequency changes in the audio. By amplifying the signal in the sound, we can clearly hear the water flowing from the roots of the plants, almost like a real water language.

Recording of water sound from a plant root
 "Water gives birth to all things, and the great hiding place is in water." Water is the god of plants.

Mantra of the Water God

By recording the water sound from the roots of different plants to design the language between plants and water, we built a world. "Water gives birth to all things, and the great hiding place is in water." Water is the god of plants. After research, it is found that the "water language" of plant roots can help plants convey different information and store memories, which is the embodiment of plant consciousness.

Human-Centered Lab extracted the water language in different plant roots and analyzed the meanings represented by different water sound frequencies, such as growth patterns and appearance characteristics, deciphering the "secret of water language". Based on this, they created a water mantra scripture belonging to plants - “Mantra of the Water God". Human beings artificially create religious ceremonies for plants, disturbing their consciousness by playing specific frequencies of sound as a means of controlling them.

Display of installation
Display of installation

Design Concept

This project is inspired by the historic and problematic concept of 'freak shows'. From the Middle Ages onwards, freaks were often used as objects of entertainment and people flocked to see their 'freak shows'. before 1900 freak shows were the main attraction of cheap museums and human eccentricity was the king of museum entertainment. It was not until 1990, when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, that profiting from the misfortunes of others was finally considered wrong. After this, mankind turned its attention to animal shows. As human respect for and protection of animals matured, animal shows eventually fell out of favor with people's entertainment.

Inspired by the above, we imagine a worldview in which humans turn their attention to the aesthetics of the hunt for plants, and we try to design a museum of monstrous plants, controlled through the mantra of the water gods, to create a plant freak show. In this way, we hope to bring the audience into our worldview and experience nature in a new dimension after human over-interference. Ultimately, plants will become 'freak artworks' created in a carnival of human curiosity and aesthetics.

We chose to listen to plants whose appearance features resemble different human organs, including the eye-like Actaea pachypoda Misty Blue, the brain-like Brain Cactus, and the bone-like Maranta leuconeura, to impose these characteristics on different "pain plants", Create an empathetic experience for the audience.

Flytrap is the pain of being teased and unable to eat normally, rainbow succulent is the pain of being persecuted by "poison" and unable to grow healthily, the green jade vine is the pain of being pierced by nails and rope training. These deformed plants will perform a natural "tragedy" directed by humans.

Through music, installations, digital film, and scorebooks, the audience is substituted into our stories, experiencing man-made nature in a new dimension. The installation will include three different sculptures of freak plants, with plant roots filled with water and earphones hanging from the roots. The audience can take off the earphones and listen to different "Mantra of the water god" together with the plants. 

The scorebook on the music stand records the music scores corresponding to the different freak plant features. The soil is sprinkled with coins to reflect the enthusiasm for freak shows in cheap museums in the past.

plant scuplture
Rainbow Brain
plant scuplture
Domesticated Vine
plant scuplture
Eyes of Venus

Medium:

music, installation, digital film
Music Development and Production Process
Music Development and Production ProcessIn the language system, different tones are emitted by different sound frequencies, which can express different meanings. We convert the underwater sound recorded in the experiment into a MIDl signal. MIDI does not send sound, only data such as tone and musical intensity, control signals for parameters such as volume, vibrato and phase, and a clock signal to set the tempo.
Recording from Actaea pachypoda
Recording from brain cactus
Recording from Maranta leuconeura
Based on the previously generated MIDI notes, we selected some of the generated MIDI passages for looping, variation and counterpoint to form different passages of "Mantra of the Water God", thus constructing the fictional music under this world view.
music score book display
music score book cover displayBased on the midi signal and the corresponding plant characteristics, we made a book of water language scriptures to show the scores of different mantras.
music score book display
music score book display
Plant Freak ShowWe used digital art to show a plant freak show, allowing the audience to enter the virtual ecosystem built by the story and experience artificial nature in a new dimension.