Tag: rhythm

I have just finished reading Monica Gagliano’s ‘Thus Spoke The Plant’. Through scientific experiments she proves that plants are sensitive beings which are capable of remembering, perception and responding to environmental stimulus, including sound¹.

It was Aristotle who differentiated plants, animals and humans in his theory of biology and his ‘structure of the souls’². By defining plants as insensitive, Gagliano argues that he effectively turned them into objects which to this day “sanctions the human right to use (and abuse) plants”³, rather than treat them as living, sensitive beings. Through a ritual practice which involves dieting on certain roots, she experiences plants in a new light and begins a journey into dialogue with them.

In many of the chapters, Gagliano makes reference to time and rhythm. The first is on page 14; “once dieted, a plant is a teacher that will stay with you forever and keep teaching you in her own plant time”. Later, she recounts an experience of recognising that “time is not out there; real time is, if anything, ‘in here’. In fact, all organisms are innately endowed with an internal sense of time, a body clock regulating circadian rhythms”⁴.

“We are able to […] keep track of time thanks to a small groups of cells on our brain, which, together with a handful of genes, have the job to keep everything synchronized (and, by the way, these same time-keeping genes are found in all other animals, as well as in plants and microbes)”⁵. It made me wonder if the rhythms of aquatic plants have a function beyond a byproduct of photosynthesis? Perhaps their sounds act as a sunshine alarm to beetles who may be taking a nap, like the clocktower that alerts factory workers, or the knocker-uppers⁶ who woke colliery miners for first their first shift?

To tap into this sense of time, Gagliano often employs the use of a drum describing the monotonous rhythm as a “powerful beat [which] pushed me over the threshold and into the unseen underside of reality”. Within shamanic practice she describes using “the repetitive drumming of a large hoop drum to bring myself into an altered state of perception with the idea of learning more about the osha root, my dream, and – perhaps – the connection between the two, if any was to be found”⁷.

The repetitive and trance-inducing rhythms remind me of time spent listening to the complex click-trains⁸ of macrophytes. So I plug myself into the pond and begin to improvise. It is a bright midday and the plants are in full voice. As if in a dream-state, I am listening to the voice of a plant who speaks to me directly. The aquatic plants become the shaman, drumming out an ancient beat which resonates with the cilia of my inner ear, sending me back to a time before we stepped foot on dry land. The hydrophone becomes an aural time machine. I play along to scattered pulses, pulling me in and flooding my senses. 

1. pp.31-35. See the first example of plants (yellow corn kernels, recorded in Bristol) emitting, hearing and responding to external sounds.  ↩︎
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_biology ↩︎
3. p.105 ↩︎
4. p.116 ↩︎
5. p.117 ↩︎
6. Definition: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35840393 ↩︎
7. pp.39-40 ↩︎
8. term borrowed from cetacean terminology, but might also be applicable? ↩︎

My research into underwater soundscapes has revealed an uncomfortable fact. In the estimated half-a-million ponds in the British countryside¹ (that’s not including the two million or so small garden ponds), we can listen to sounds that most people can’t explain. And some of these sounds must have existed before humans, or any other creature for that matter, walked the Earth.

Plants first made their appearance on Earth in the Cambrian era circa. 530 million years ago (ref needed). During the process of photosynthesis, gases are released from the stomata of plants. In the case of aquatic plants these gases form discrete bubbles which can be counted to demonstrate plant stress (ref needed). They can also be heard using a hydrophone. It is one of the most distinctive and exciting sounds to hear underwater and never fails to impress participants in my Sonic Pond Dipping sessions. Seemingly passive in our surroundings, plants are instantly revealed to be a living, biotic entity. Our experiences of time become aligned. The school books we’ve read about photosynthesis and the importance of plants for planetary balance becomes part of a lived experience.

I’ve been unable to uncover any research into any rhythmic variations that aquatic plants may produce when exposed to light. Could it be that species of plants have individual ‘voices’? Could future bioacoustic studies allow us to identify a plant simply by listening? These are experiments which I am in the process of setting up through scientific collaborations with laboratory access.

So, what do aquatic plants sound like? To my ears, they are the time-keepers of our ponds, streams, and lakes. During daylight they lay down a persistent beats. Sometimes theses can last for hours, like a ritualistic ceremony to the bringer of light whose rays shine brightly through the watery firmament, not far above. Some species have an arching sound that modulates pitch like a whining oscillator. Others produce a wooden knocking sound that will incrementally slow down or speed up, like a DJ who subtly changes the energy on the dance floor. Sporadically, a burst of gaseous exchange causes an unexpected squeal, punctuating the soundscape (and maybe arousing a snigger…). Each plant seems to be guided by its own inner tempo, resulting in a highly polyrhythmic atmosphere. This is ‘time, no changes²‘ for an aquatic audience. It makes me wonder what role these plants have played in our understanding of rhythms as a fundamental property of human life.

The study of plants detecting and responding to sound has been coined ‘phytoacoustics³‘. These studies also crossover into ideas of plant sentience – new to science but with a long history in arts and cultures (refs needed).

In July 2024 I visited a section of the River Wear in County Durham with movement artist Scarlet Sumagr. Arriving early on a clear, sunny lunchtime, I positioned some hydrophones and assumed my listening position. Almost immediately I was pleasantly surprised to note some ‘new’ sounds – something akin to a bird chirping, although none were around (I removed the headphones on multiple occasions to double-check). Upon Scarlet’s arrival my headphones were passed over and the now familiar look, a cross between bewilderment, awe and excitement, shone across their face. Tuning into the aquatic soundscape, Scarlet almost immediately began to respond through bodily movements. I observed, as an outsider. Scarlet had taken a deep-dive, eyes closed, bare feet dangling in the clear water, headphones providing extra distance from the familiar sounds of our terrestrial soundscape.

After 5 minutes, Scarlet came up for air and described in lucid details the things heard. I’d not been privy to the sounds but hazarded a guess, listening back through the recording I’d made on the Sony PCM-M10. Plants, almost certainly, but also a melodic fragment which reminded me the peal of church bells (upload audio). Had the tolls of Durham Cathedral been ringing out, they’d be audible from where we sat. Could they be heard underwater? Perhaps these underwater percussionists were branching out and beginning to imitate extraneous sounds…

We placed an underwater camera in the shallow water, facing upwards, to view Scarlet’s improvisations from beneath the surface. A reversed aquarium⁴, the human gazing out. The movements of small fish merge with those of the human to create a multispecies collaboration, dancing to the sound of aquatic plants whose rhythms have gone unnoticed from millennia.

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References:

de la Haye, D. Sumagr, S. (2024) In The Flow . URL: https://youtu.be/mkRCVQJIpGU?si=WeS_g1splH83Gfld

1. Biggs, J. Williams, P. (2024) Ponds, Pools and Puddles. Collins New Naturalist Library, p.42 ↩︎
2. See Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz ↩︎
3. de Melo, H.C. (2023) Plants detect and respond to sounds. Planta 257, 55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-023-04088-1 ↩︎
4. See – Cohen, M. (2022). The Underwater Eye: How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1nj342q ↩︎