Concept
Plant Biosensor
Looper
about this project
This project was initiated by Louise Penrice who wanted plant-generated audio to accompany her artwork that incorporated plant material.
Plants produce tiny, fluctuating electrical signals as they interact with their environment — light, touch, temperature, even the presence of other organisms. The biosensor taps into this hidden language using a 555 timer circuit connected to probes in the plant's soil or leaves. The circuit reads changes in bio-conductance and converts them into a pulse signal, which is passed on to the microcontroller for interpretation. The result is a live data stream drawn directly from a living plant.
The Looper firmware runs on an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and translates the biosensor's pulse stream into MIDI music in real time. An interrupt-driven system captures the timing of each pulse, analyses the patterns, and maps them to MIDI notes and control signals — sent out as standard DIN MIDI to any synthesiser or recording setup. A built-in LED matrix on the board acts as a small control panel, letting you dial in parameters like density, range, and smoothing. The effect is that the plant becomes the composer, its internal rhythms shaping the music continuously.
Sound Example
Made in Logic Pro using multiple instruments e.g. Ghostly Reversed Organ, Pulse Base, Swarming Arp.
The Looper Interface (work in progress)
A simple interface that can control the mix of serial and MIDI data, volume, density of looping and reverb. Two data blocks show live data (not shown in live mode).
Visualisation of Midi Data (work in progress)
The first of 3 in built visualisations - a swarm based on 3 elements of the audio stream.
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