Streams in the Veins

2024
plants, laser, computer, electronic device

Ars Electronica Center_ Futurelab AI x Music

Collaboration:
Youngjun Choi, TX Lab, KAIST

Kaito Muramatsu, Sony Computer Science Laboratory, The University of Tokyo

Academic Publication:

Streams in the Veins: Harmonic Cycle of Multimodal Signals for Interspecies Interactive Composing, Leonardo Journal

Streams in the Veins conducts a piano ensemble performed by a human pianist and plants. During the performance, the transmission of sound across multiple pianos creates a dynamic interplay among agents—human and plant—unfolding into an ongoing cycle of communicative improvisation. This process explores an interactive approach to non-human agency within the framework of interspecies co-creation, specifically through the medium of music.

Through our musical sessions with plants, we encountered the temporal divergences between the human and plant umwelt—including their distinct response times to external stimuli and the perceptual worlds that emerge from these differences. Such encounters prompt us to reflect on the attitudes and modes of engagement that arise when two species mutually influence, learn from, and modulate one another.

LIVE PERFORMANCE

Ars Electronica Center
2025

Futurelab AI x Music, Linz