Maximilian Moser – Professor of Physiology at the Medical University of Graz, author, Director of the Human Research Institute – Weiz, Austria
School Project: Augarten High School
April 16, 2024
Gymnasium am Augarten in Vienna, April 2024
Friendship with Nature, school project as part of the class’s art week
Participants
Students of the Gymnasium am Augarten
Christian MICHAEL (FwN)
Maximilian Moser (FwN)
Paul Lukas Wagner (Augarten High School)
Stefan Wirnsberger (University of Applied Arts)
Teenagers, of course, aren’t usually all that keen on meditative music and botanical explanations. What a pleasant surprise, then, during our project in Vienna with the class from the Gymnasium am Augarten! A group of enthusiastic young people—just the kind of students a teacher really hopes for.
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 organize a project featuring the music of plants as part of the school’s art week—and perhaps even create graphic images inspired by this music. Thanks to the support of the Software AG Foundation, we were actually able to carry out the project on short notice. Stefan Wirnsberger from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna documented the project with film footage and photos, which were then graphically altered and became the subject of an exhibition at Cafe Wallenstein and are scheduled to be shown at the Climate Biennale on Karlsplatz in Vienna (Music of Trees). An important goal of our projects is, after all, to foster a bond between young people and plants through music and thereby also to foster an understanding of the importance of biodiversity.
Photo: Christian MICHAEL
Since this was our team’s first public project, we had practiced a bit the night before and set up the equipment at the artists’ café “Das Wallenstein.” The plan was for the project to take place primarily outdoors in Augarten Park, but heavy rain was forecast… and it did pour! Fortunately, there was a break in the rain in the morning, and the tall maple tree by the roadside had a few fresh leaves on its lower trunk, so we were able to let a tree have its say (or rather, make 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 placed in the care of the students. Even during the introduction, the students’ interest and excitement were palpable: “Will plants make real music?”
Photo: Stefan Wirnsberger
Treemuse
The Treemuse is our new device for bringing plant music to life. For the first time, it can
display the notes the plant plays and, on a keyboard, the keys a piano would play if controlled via MIDI (a data standard used by musicians).
The students carefully cleaned the plant and then attached the electrodes—one in the soil of the flowerpot, one on a leaf. After a few seconds, the first piano notes sounded; the students were thrilled and later said they never would have thought plants could produce such complex music,
Cymatic Figures
For the first time in public, we presented the visualization of plant music using cymatic (kyma = Greek: the wave) figures. In one of the cymatic bowls, we placed Lycopodium spores, which then arranged themselves into fractal structures in response to the music. The other bowl was filled with water.
The students formed a circle, holding hands and including the plant and the TreeMuse in the circle, and here too the device did not let us down, playing music based on the biological rhythms of the entire group.
Can trees make music?
Since we also—and above all—wanted to get trees to make music, we took advantage of a break in the rain to make a maple tree in front of the Kunstcafe sing. The students followed along with interest and conducted various experiments with the tree’s music: A particularly tight hug with the tree was documented both photographically and musically:
Do plants react to music?
I told the story of a musician (Dagmar Trichtinger-Scharf) who had been practicing a guitar concerto by Vivaldi for weeks, playing the same piece over and over. One day, she connected her houseplant—which had heard the piece repeatedly—to a
plant music device and said, “The plant played a theme that sounded just like Vivaldi!” We’ve also posted this audio sample on our website so you can hear for yourself whether the plant’s music sounds like Vivaldi.
The students immediately proved to be very eager to experiment: they first played Mozart for the plant and then hip-hop music from a cell phone, listening intently for a possible response. Then all kinds of musical instruments were set up on the TreeMuse to produce the most striking sound patterns possible through the speaker.
In a parallel project by the music classes at the Gymnasium am Augarten, the plan is to add human voices and instruments to the tree music we recorded and turn it into a song, which will then also be available online. A wonderful interdisciplinary and cross-class project on interspecies communication.
This Zürgelbaum tree on Wallensteinplatz in Vienna also produced appealing tree music and cymatic sound patterns, much to the delight of students and passersby.
Precise photos of the plant music’s cymatic figures were then taken with a tripod; these were subsequently transformed into works of art during graphic design classes and became part of an exhibition (“Sound Images as Inspiration for Innovative Urban Design”). They are also scheduled to be exhibited at the Climate Biennale.
Original cymatic image (left) and graphic abstraction (right)
Exhibition of the images at the Kunstcafe Wallenstein
By the afternoon, the students were already very tired, and some fell asleep on the Wallenstein’s couch, while others played various types of music from their cell phones for the plant musician and observed her reaction.
Since they seemed a bit down to me, I joined the tired girls and told them that if things ever got tough, they should always remember: “The sun is always shining above the clouds!” At first, the girls 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 sometimes helped me a lot in life when things were going badly for me.” The girl replied, “Because I actually dreamed about the sun afterward!” What a beautiful gift, I thought to myself—for me, the most beautiful part of an otherwise already wonderful day!
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