2020/2021

Interaction, Sound

Artist: Aseem Suri

‍Artist Statement:

COMMUNION is an interactive sound installation, created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns. For a society that has been consistently moving away from nature, the lockdowns (especially the more brutal ones, like in India) made our city-dwelling existence totally concrete as even access to local parks were cut off. In addition, and perhaps more critically, TOUCH, became a denied sensation. No other sense organ has as many correlations to emotions (being touched, having feelings) for a reason. The lockdowns disrupted our ability to feel things. Consequently, depression and anxiety went up almost threefold during the pandemic. COMMUNION imagines a post-COVID world where we touch nature on a daily basis with the same curiosity we had as kids.

About:

In COMMUNION, viewers are encouraged to touch and explore the plants – run their fingers up and down their stems, press into the leaves, tap the plant at different places, bend them or grab multiple leaves at once. The plants have sensors in their soil, with visible wires sending signals, as a metaphor to how trees communicate with each other through their ‘roots’.
The sounds designed for each plant reflect the gesture they most intuitively react to and what they might sound like. So while a succulent invites one to tap (leading to more percussive sounds), a leafy plant reacts more to how many leaves are touched (manifesting as more notes played), while another may react to where its stem is pressed, or how far it’s bent.

Software/Systems Used: Max/MSP, Ableton, Bare Conductive, Arduino

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