In my listening practice, I am interested in the relationship between body, sound, and site. I looked for these elements in Herter Community Garden and found, through listening, deep interactions between human, non-human, and site. Herter Garden became a listening laboratory, where local knowledge shapes embodied practices of listening. Baolian’s influence was felt through the way she warmly invited me into her garden plot and taught me how to navigate her footpaths. Baolian shared a wealth of knowledge and joyfully directed me to record the sound of her vegetable harvests. It was the spatial qualities of Baolian’s carefully tended space that inspired me. I began to realize that the sounds I collected with Baolian carried embodied characteristics. Listening evoked claustrophobic spatial constraints, finely balanced walking, and plant materiality.

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My sound art installation, Baolian’s Garden, is a reflection of Baolian’s narrow garden plot, and the shared experience of listening to plant bodies. 40 unique sound samples were recorded with contact microphones affixed to plant stalks and stems. These site-specific recordings are translated back into the studio through camera tracking software and midi-based note playback. When the computer program detects acceleration of the body, it triggers note playback. Sound intensity corresponds to intensity of movement. The installation becomes an instrument that demands slow, measured, and exploratory body movement. Both the listener and mover in this sound art performance are agentive, sharing in the perceptual experience of dancing through a plant-scaled garden plot, gently brushing aside bean vines with one’s arm. Listening to this music suggests a shared human and non-human culture, as suggested by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’ perspectivism. Movement-based listening situates the body as another agent within an interspecies culture that demands its own form of speculative listening. 

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