Introduction 

We think we know the sounds of nature. It is birds chirping, wind through trees, thunder echoing through the valley. However, there are other phenomena in the natural environment that produce sounds we can’t perceive: Plants. Mankind has been advancing towards an era of advanced technology. These technologies enhance our sensory capacity to explore the world’s mysteries. They have become a natural extension of the human senses. Not only have we gained the ability to explore new things, but we are also exploring new modes of creative expression. 

​

To explore how to visualize these sounds, I designed PlantMax, an interactive interface for plant sound. It combines a GSR sensor with capacitance sensors to capture plant data, which can be processed by a computer and transformed into the sound that the human ear can perceive. Giving plants a voice, a possibility to respond and engage us would lead to new forms of entertainment, enhance our lifestyles and form a new environmental computational platform that can be used to make a “dialogue” between humans and plants.