Can you make music with plants? A recent University of Toronto grad answers the question with an installation that uses houseplants as musical instruments.
Steven Webb, a Doctor of Musical Arts grad from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music, created a project he calls Plant Music. It’s part of a series of works he’s developed that incorporate sounds he samples from the world around us.
The COVID-19 lockdowns put a detour in his intended path of collaborating with other musicians and artists. Steven came up with Plant Music during the pandemic as a way for people to connect with nature when they couldn’t connect with each other.
“It’s really developed into sort of examining … the confusion, disorientation and dread that arises from living in this world dealing with multiple crises — the climate crisis, growing marginalization of minority groups and the increasing isolation of the individual despite being hyper-connected with the internet.”
How Does Plant Music Work?
His Plant Music installation uses a series of wires connected to plants that are touch sensitive. Since plants are largely composed of water, a touch changes their electrical resistance. Steven’s installation feeds the plant’s electrical signals to a microcomputer. That, in turn, sends the electronic data to a second computer, where each signal triggers a different pre-recorded sound.
His soundscape includes other sounds from nature, such as cacti needles scraping together, which he enhances.
“You can sort of play the plants — almost like percussion instruments — because every time you touch it, it will trigger a sample of a sound,” he says in a media release. “That way, you can create instruments out of the plants themselves.”
Webb first developed the installation at the Faculty of Music’s Electronic Music Studio in January 2022, later using the sounds he’d created in his doctoral recital. His recital presented three movements, titled seeds, growth and “photosynchosis,” the latter of which he defines as the human interference in natural processes.
Steven Webb, PhD
As a composer and sound designer, Steven’s works include orchestral arrangements, video game music, and everything in between. “My music ties in strongly to my social activism, my personal ethics and views of the world,” he says.
A native of South Africa, Steven is currently based in Toronto. His music is influenced by orchestral cinematic music, along with video games, retro sci-fi and horror, and his own life story. The lockdowns led to experimentation at his workshop in the university’s Electronic Music Studio, and Plant Music was one of the projects to emerge.
He was part of the 2020 RBC Bridges Soundstreams Program, and his work Doria was performed by the Soundstreams Vocal Ensemble in February 2022.
Steven’s music has been performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, The Thin Edge Music Collective, Pro Coro Canada, the Hamilton Children’s Choir, Exultate Chamber Singers, and Prairie Voices, among many others. He has also written scores and music for film.
He is a resident of the Canadian Music Centre, where Steven says that he intends on continuing this line of musical inquiry, using the background noise of everyday life in contemporary society to create music. His eventual goal is to create what he calls a “sonic forest”.
Other projects include ROYGBIV, a piece that will incorporate light sensors to create music for saxophone that harmonizes with the colours of a specific room or site.
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