Mamoru Fujieda, Yuji Dogane

Ecological Plantron was a CD released in 1994, the audio document of an installation held in 1994 at a gallery in Tokyo. The Plantron is a bioelectric interface developed by botanist Yuji Dogane; it was designed to give voice to plants, using electronic means to make audible the energy of the natural world, prioritizing the non-human aspects of nature. Dogane was assisted in the project by composer Mamoru Fujieda, who helped to convert the vegetal energies into audible sounds. Though they stress that this is not music, the recordings that Dogane and Fujieda released are actually quite musical and not at all unpleasant in the way that some other non-musical sounds might seem. There is an attractive gentleness and an intelligent flow here, a vibrant energy, and one can sense that the plants are communicating, waiting for us to understand. This re-release features original and new notes in Japanese and English; the LP version features excerpts from evening, night, morning and afternoon time frames. The CD also includes a bonus disc featuring unreleased recordings from two related installations from 1995 and 1997. Also available as a download, this is a fascinating glimpse into the world of our leafy friends.