The Secret Language of Trees – Studio Version
Sound Installation
Materials: Bark, fabric, metal wire, transparent wire, speakers, MP3s
Date:05/2021
“The secret Language of Trees” reflects on the limits of language as a mean of communication between humans and the botanical world and questions the need of people to seek a relatable form of expression in plants instead of attuning to their own means of communication. The sound, coming from the sculptural elements, exposes a constructed processes of translation whose outcome is a non-sense mixture of noises, as to highlight the forced nature of this process.
The work is primarily informed by the research and writings of Monica Gagliano, a bio-acoustic researcher who investigates the ecological significance of the sounds that plants produce to communicate among themselves and other organisms. More specifically, it addresses the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic language introduced in the book “the language of plants”, exploring the gap between the two and translating one into the other through an artificial process that just results in an undecipherable corporeal voice.