Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well.
By the time each one of us is born, we’re already intimately aware of security. We sense our mother’s heartbeat while residing in the womb, which carries us through childbirth. As an infant, when we hear a familiar voice—frequently that of our mothers—we begin to develop the rudimentary physiological responses that correspond to feeling safe and protected.
The human brain is remarkably adept at processing complex information, which arguably is what separates us from other living creatures. Plants have no parents and thus no thoughts or feelings—or so we assume. Suss Müsik poses an interesting philosophical dilemma: it’s a crime to harm a human being, and there are strong moral arguments for treating animals with the same level of respect. And yet, the ethical argument against plucking a tomato from its vine is considered an exercise in absurdity.
Clearly, one must draw a line someplace. Any living creature—human, plant, or animal—can only express the information it receives and internalizes according to its cognitive capabilities. That said, it’s entirely possible that the concepts of timbre, pitch, rhythm, tone and context are untranslatable between species. And none of us can formally declare that a plant doesn’t verbalize danger in its own fashion. Wasn’t it Roald Dahl who wrote a short story about trees that scream?
For this soothing yet quietly unsettling piece, Suss Müsik sought to create a concept known as “evergreen noise.” A soothing synth wash was played for an amount of time in one channel (the “human” side), then pitched downward with a dollop of static added in the other (the “plant” side). In the background are sampled female voices coupled with heavily treated audio recordings of deciduous foliage fluttering in the breeze.
The piece is titled Tomatis and named after Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, a French otolaryngologist who specialized in the way infants use sounds produced by their parents in order to develop cognitive and social skills. The image is an organic “herb wall” in Austin, TX.